![]() ![]() ![]() I’m no electronics expert, but if you can make a door unlock, I think you could probably trigger something else to make it obvious the game has completed (and maybe even stop the clock). They explained to us at the beginning that we’d hear a click when we completed the room and that would mean the door was unlocked. My final criticism was that the finale was underwhelming. It’s worth saying that there were some areas of each room that were brightly lit, so generally, with a bit of effort, you could get round most of the lighting issues. Worse still, they went for the yellow light and blue/green code option which made things even more difficult. Telling people about a series of puzzles is a bit dry, but telling people about being in an Egyptian tomb is much more enthralling.Īs always seems to be the case with dimly lit rooms, they decided to put a colour based puzzle in, which always frustrates me. A lot of rooms are, well, just rooms, so it’s great that there are companies out there trying to make things a little more immersive. They’ve made a real effort to make the room, puzzle mechanics and the puzzles themselves lie within the Egyptian tomb theme. Without a doubt though, the strength of the Escape Room lies in its theming. You do have to remember that this is the easiest room, so you can’t expect the puzzles to be too taxing, but I’d have liked to have seen some easyish parallelised puzzles right at the start to get people going. Indeed, with two people one of the puzzles was definitely a bit frustrating and a third team member would have helped immensely. ![]() The saving grace is that several of the puzzles do lend themselves reasonably well to team work. That’s going to be a general issue in this room with a very linear set of puzzles. For the two of us there was enough to be going on with, but I’d worry, if you had five, that it would be pretty crowded, especially if you were an experienced team. I got over that soon enough and started looking round the room for clues. In fairness, in this experience there was at least a good atmospheric reason for making it dark, which is better than some other rooms I’ve played where the darkness seemed to be somewhat arbitrary, but still… If you’re going to do that, then please at least give me a torch. I’m not an unreasonable person, and I don’t object to a bit of darkness but please don’t make me play the entire hour in a badly lit room. You’ve got an hour to get in, find his secrets and escape or perhaps you’ll find out why someone who found the elixir of life had need of a tomb… Inside the roomĪh, the dreaded “make the room difficult by not lighting it properly” twist. His tomb is filled with traps and hidden compartments to prevent wandering adventures from stealing his treasures. You’ve broken into Thutmosis’ tomb, a pharaoh who discovered the elixir of immortality (aside: I’m slightly dubious about anybody that claims to have discovered the elixir of immortality and also has a tomb, but I rolled with it). If you’re going to be trapped in a room for an hour, you need to have a working toilet to use, and with up to 25 people playing at once, that need is pretty desperate. The ladies was out of order, one of the gents was too, and the final working toilet had a badly broken seat. The big disappointment was the toilets, which didn’t match up with the rest of the venue. I really liked that fun urban feel to the decor, although I couldn’t help but feel that most London companies would have fitted a couple of escape rooms into that central atrium space! (Aside: there seemed to be additional construction work going on that made me wonder whether there might be more rooms opening here in the not too distant future). The central atrium, which connects to all the games as well as the reception and waiting area, is huge, and surrounded by graffiti relating to each of the games. It’s big and airy, with plenty of glass to accentuate the feeling of space. On first entry, you walk into a reception area. ![]() It’s an old, building which doesn’t look anything special from the outside, but inside it’s clear they’ve really made an effort. There’s plenty of signage outside the venue, so you’re unlikely to miss it as you drive/walk past, and if you did happen to come by car then there’s plenty of parking round the side. First up was the Mummy, supposedly their easiest room, rated at 3 stars of difficulty (because what self respecting player would play a one or two star difficulty game?!). Even Brendan Fraser could escape from this room… Outside the roomĪ couple of months ago, I chanced upon a special offer that gave half price entry to The Escape Room Preston, so I couldn’t resist signing up to play two of their games over Christmas. ![]()
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