Breakout Chester – Identify

I was only there the previous day, but I was back at Breakout Chester with a different group, all of whom were taking on their first ever room with Identify. With this being my 15th room, this made me the most experienced there, but as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, experience doesn’t mean I’m any good…

The Story:
Your friend has been murdered! You know who did it, but the police do not believe you. In a desperate attempt to find justice you have invaded the killer’s lair in the hopes of finding the proof to bring the killer to justice. However, the maniac could return at any time. Gather the proof and send this killer to prison before he returns. Do you have what it takes to IDENTIFY this psychopath’s other victims? 

Identify is a simple but well themed room which looks a bit like someone’s grandparent’s front room, with an old record player, armchair, drawers, and suchlike… all the Serial Killer home comforts.

The puzzles fitted together nicely, with the final goal becoming clear quite quickly so we all knew exactly what we were moving towards. 

I think we had a bit of a tech failure in the room as at one point we could hear a muffled voice from behind a locked door, but once we were inside we couldn’t hear anything. Once our host was made aware of this though she was through the door with an mp3 player in no time at all with the same recording, so it’s nice to know they’re prepared with backups and minimal hold ups.

There was one particular puzzle I’d take slight issue with, which involved having to have prior knowledge of a couple of things for a 3 digit combination lock. We could work out the first digit from what we had, the second digit was a vague guess from a vague recollection, and the third we had no clue so just tried every possibility, and fortunately we came up trumps. I think if we’d not been able to make an educated guess at the second we’d have struggled a lot more.

Other than that I think we worked our way through it quite well, though we needed several clues, including one for something I particularly liked involving a pair of binoculars – very nice touch.

I should also mention the soundtrack played throughout too, which I think at one point was giving us a clue, but my favourite bit of which was when they played ‘Goodbye Horses’. I was tempted to do my Buffalo Bill dance, but I’m not sure anyone’s ready for that…

Great room with a different goal of ‘work something out’ rather than the usual ‘get out’.

Result: Identified the victims in 55 Minutes