Ultimate Escape Llandudno – CSI Murder Mystery
Venue: Ultimate Escape Llandudno
Room: CSI Murder Mystery
The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot
Date: 07/04/2018
We were back in North Wales again for another fun day out and went a little further along the coast than last time to Llandudno. After a quick stop off at the top of the Great Orme to take in the bleak, misty weather and visit the cafe for a tea and a coffee, we headed back down into town to Ultimate Escape.
We’d booked both of their rooms for today, and first up was CSI Murder Mystery.
The Story:
DCI Bodgit and his overworked sidekick Sergeant Leggit (who prior to joining the police force had a building firm together called Bodgit and Leggit) are faced with a particularly puzzling murder case.
You and your team must take on the roles of DCI Bodgit and his/her faithful and Sergeant Leggit. Work as one team or optionally split into sub-teams to take on the roles of DCI Bodgit, Sergeant Leggit, Pathologist and Forensics expert.
Can you discover the clues which will lead you to the suspects and their alibis?
Can you solve the puzzles needed to get witness statements that will confirm or destroy their alibis?
Will the forensics evidence place the guilty at the scene of the crime and rule out the innocent?
Can you solve the murder?
We’d got some great directions emailed through with our booking confirmation, along with a parking suggestion which was free for a couple of hours. We were going to be a little longer though, so we managed to find a handy space just round the corner. The building was easy to find, and once inside we were greeted warmly and given a short briefing.
The goal of CSI Murder Mystery wasn’t to escape, but instead was to solve a murder and gather enough evidence to make a case against the guilty party, and while the theme of the room might sound a little grisly, the investigation was quite light hearted with the victim, suspects, and investigators all having very tongue in cheek names.
The room was fairly small and set ‘outside’ in a garden. With only two of us there was plenty of space, though I imagine it could maybe get a little cramped with a larger group. For us it meant we could spread out the evidence as we found it to get a good overview – and collecting as much evidence as we could is where we started as that’s the what the room is all about. We were a little daunted to start with, but thankfully things started to fall into place as we got into the swing of it.
We did mess up quite badly at one point as we were convinced we’d solved the crime, but with at least one locked box still to open something seemed not quite right… so, we decided to use the clue system (more than once). With escaping not being a goal, the room was never locked, and the system was that if we needed a clue then we could just pop our head round the door and ask! Very handy.
As it turns out we’d missed something by being a little careless and not examining a piece of evidence thoroughly enough. This completely threw our case out of the window and led to a frantic re-examining of evidence and a ‘doh!’ moment of realisation.
Special mention has to go to one of the boxes we had to open during the course of the room. Without giving away what it involved, it was one of the most fun and satisfying, yet incredibly simple things I’ve done in an escape room, and I can’t quite believe I haven’t encountered it before. It seems such an obvious thing to include, and I thought it was so cool to play with I actually ordered one for myself when I got home!
I have done a room with a similar ‘evidence gathering’ theme before (Identify at Breakout Chester), but CSI Murder Mystery was executed in a completely different style. It was like a cross between playing Cluedo and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (which is from a brilliant and fun game series for anyone that hasn’t played it) and it definitely made for a different kind of Escape Room experience.
A well designed and very engaging room, especially if you’re the type that likes solving contradiction style puzzles and making logical deductions from them. I believe the room is intended to create an almost board game style adventure and it certainly delivers the goods in that regard.
