Cyber Q Worcester – Mysterious Castle

Room #050
Venue: Cyber Q Worcester
Room: Mystery Castle
The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, Nifta
Date: 24/11/2018
Earlier in the year we’d been lucky enough to visit Ludlow and had really fallen for the place, and intended to make a return visit at some point. The Ludlow Medieval Christmas Fayre seemed as good an excuse as any to get back there so we got it booked in.
Hotels in town were either a bit pricy or a bit full, so we ended up staying nearer to Kidderminster and found that Cyber Q in Worcester was one of the nearest Escape Room venues and so got their Mysterious Castle room booked for the evening.
The Story:
You are on vacation with your family and friends in a lovely log cabin tucked away deep in the forest, miles away from the nearest soul. You decide to take a walk but before you know it, you are lost in the vast wilderness of the forest and surrounded by nothing but trees and darkness.
As the daylight slowly disappears, the sun sets and severe dehydration takes its toll on your body, you catch a glimmer of light breaking through the trees. In the distance, you see a mysterious castle and know that it’s your only chance. Are you finally safe now?
Unfortunately, justice and luck do not seem to exist in whatever land you have stumbled upon. Are you able to withstand the fear of the shadow’s lurking? The darkness is reaching out. Your only hope of escape is to defeat the Countess before the sunsets.
Ludlow Medieval Christmas Fayre had turned out to be well worth a visit, and somewhere we’ll probably go to again next time it’s on. We spent most of the day wandering around the stalls and enjoying the entertainment, then headed for Worcester where we parked in town and had a wander some more round the shops before heading to Cyber Q.
We hadn’t realised that they operated out of a couple of buildings in the same area so initially went to the main obviously signposted place, where we were redirected a short distance away to a second small and functional reception area and were met with a friendly welcome.
After a quick briefing and a chat to establish what Escape Room experience we’d had before, we were set loose.
First impressions were good as we entered an atmospherically but adequately lit and themed Castle bedchamber and set about reconnoitering the place. We’d heard beforehand both from reviews and chatting to people that we should expect the room to be quite search heavy, and while there was a fair bit of hunting around involved, we felt there wasn’t anything that took too much time or that was unfairly hidden.
The bedchamber was mainly straightforward but with a couple of surprises in there. One task had an extremely low tech solution which seemed almost too obvious, but at the same time was quite satisfying to complete. It was actually something I’d had to do before out in the real world years ago but this was the first time I’d encountered it in an Escape Room. Thankfully, sometimes the simplest solutions prove to be right.
As we progressed further we encountered quite a large physical puzzle that I became slightly obsessed with completing. I finally cracked it, but I felt slightly cheated out of a small moment of glory when it transpired that I didn’t actually need to complete the whole thing at all and should probably have noticed something that we needed right in front of me as I was working. That was a little exasperating, but I’m awarding myself a couple of kudos points for being thorough.
We needed to take a couple of clues, mainly for a piece of equipment we didn’t want to turn too hard for fear of breaking it but we had the right idea and just needed confirmation that we weren’t in danger of trashing the place, and as we neared the end the finale had a little theatricality thrown in which led to our actual escape, which turned out to be far more literal than we were expecting…
While I’ve done rooms with them both individually before, this was the first time that Mr Carrot, Nifta, and myself had attempted a room together and despite the enormous demotivating drag factor of Mr Carrot’s usual ‘meh’ attitude we worked pretty well as a team.
I’d approached this room with a little trepidation from what I’d read and heard beforehand, but I was pleasantly surprised to find my fears were unfounded. While it’s maybe a little on the easy side, there was plenty in there to keep us entertained and having fun. If we manage to get to Ludlow again in 2019 I’d certainly harangue the team into coming back for Cyber Q’s other rooms.