Gemini Lounge Escape Room

Five Families escape room guide · 4228 Flatlands Avenue, Canarsie · 1981

Neon beer signs out front, Roy DeMeo's crew in the back. Don't open the freezer. The Gemini Lounge is one of the Five Families escape rooms: a 3D recreation of a real scene from mob history that you walk around as your own mobster, searching for evidence and cracking a four-digit padlock before the clock runs out. This guide covers the real story behind the room, what you'll find inside, and how to get out.

The real story

The Gemini Lounge ran as an ordinary neighborhood bar. Roy DeMeo's crew used it as their hangout from the 1970s, and most of their victims were killed there.

Alongside the killings, the DeMeo crew ran a huge stolen car ring, and dealt in drugs and pornography.

Victims were usually brought in through the side door of the lounge, then walked into the apartment at the back.

Roy DeMeo was found dead in the trunk of his own Cadillac in January 1983. Who ordered it has never been settled, but many believe it was Paul Castellano.

DeMeo's crew were meticulous about sanitising the Gemini after incidents. Despite the scale of their operation, investigators found remarkably little physical evidence at the bar itself — most of what convicted crew members came from informants and financial records.

Partial sanitisation was often worse than none — it demonstrated to investigators that someone had been there after the fact, which added obstruction charges to whatever else they were building.

Setting the scene

It's a Tuesday night in 1981. The Gemini Lounge looks like any other bar on Flatlands Avenue — neon beer signs, a jukebox, a few regulars. But you know what happens in the back room. Roy DeMeo's crew has been using this place for years. The bodies go into the freezer. The cars go to the chop shop. Nothing leaves a trace.

Tonight something went wrong. A job that was supposed to be clean isn't. There's evidence in this room that connects the crew to three unsolved homicides — and word is the NYPD are twenty minutes away.

You've been sent to sanitise the place before they arrive. Find what needs to go. The freezer log. The Polaroids. The cash register tape. All of it.

Clear the bar, then the apartment in the back of the building, then the back room. The back door out to the alley is padlocked from the inside. Find the code and get out. Whatever you do, don't open the freezer.

Before you get inside, you make your own way there. Drive down Flatlands Avenue at night, past the auto-parts shops and bodegas, to the Gemini's red neon. A green arrow shows you the door.

Three rooms in one

The Gemini Lounge isn't one room, it's three, and you only see the next one once you've earned it. Each has three things to search. Search everything in the room you're in and a door unlocks, a glowing arrow shows you the way through, and the next part of the scene opens up. The clock keeps running the whole time: 5 minutes for all three.

The padlock code is spread across all three, so you can't escape from the bar. Move fast in the first room: the last room is where people run out of time.

What you'll find in each room

There are 9 things to search in the Gemini Lounge, three in each room. 4 of them hide a digit of the padlock code, 2 are dead ends put there to waste your time, and the rest fill in the story. The newspaper, the polaroid and the ashtray stay locked until you've found 3 clues. The freezer, the freezer log and the back door stay locked until you've found 6 clues.

First room: The bar

Second room: The apartment

Third room: The back room

The Gemini Lounge escape room walkthrough

1. Take in the room. Drag to look around and walk with the stick or arrow keys. Question marks show everything you can search.
2. Clear each room. Search all three things in the bar and the way through to the apartment unlocks. Clear that and you're into the back room. Follow the glowing arrow to the next door.
3. Find the four digits. Each piece of evidence that matters gives you one digit, and tells you which position it goes in. Stuck? The hints below point you to the right room, not the answer.
4. Ignore the red herrings. Some items look important and aren't. Don't spend the clock on them.
5. Open the padlock with the four digits in order, before the 5 minutes run out.
6. Make the call. You'll choose how it ends: Take the log, the Polaroid, the receipt tape — leave through the back; Grab what you can see and go — no time to be thorough; Leave everything — just get out now. Each ending tells you what really happened.

Tips for escaping

• Read each piece of evidence to the end: the digit is usually in the last line.
• If the clock's getting away from you, a hint costs 25 Mob Coins and an extra minute costs 50.
• Holding a drink or a cigar from the Social Club gives you 20 extra seconds in every room.
• On a phone, turn it sideways for a wider view. Your evidence, digits and the padlock are in the pull-out case file.

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