REVIEWS

Cyber Q Worcester – Mysterious Castle

Mystery Castle

Cyber Q Worcester

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.

Result: Defeated the Countess and escaped in 44 minutes

Wirral Escape Rooms – The Curse of the Golden Lion (Second Visit)

The Curse of the Golden Lion

Wirral Escape Rooms

Venue: Wirral Escape Rooms

Room: The Curse of the Golden Lion

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, JM

Date: 17/11/2018


This turned out to be a bit of an unexpected bonus for us…

We’d actually visited Wirral Escape Rooms just to play their seasonal Christmas Confusion, but as we’d done so well in there we were very kindly offered another chance to play their Curse of the Golden Lion room which we’d first encountered back in January right after it had opened.

We’d loved it and had given it a Golden Disco Ball of Awesome Escapiness, but the room has been tweaked and honed quite a bit since then though and we felt it’d definitely be fun to see exactly what changes and improvements had been made.

Last time we’d escaped with a time of 58 minutes and managed to snaffle just one of Hathaway’s bonus items, so seeing as we already knew the basics of the room, even with some differences the pressure was still on to at least improve on that!

Oh, and jumping ahead slightly with a small spoiler, yes it definitely still deserves a…

Golden Disco Ball - Shiny

The Story:
Famous adventurer Hathaway Brown has mysteriously contacted you. Being past his prime he has picked you and your team for a very important mission… Hathaway once spent some time in the Jungles of South America, where he claims he found the Golden Lion. The only problem is, he left it in his jungle shack, which was padlocked up in a way that only Hathaway could execute… with puzzles & riddles!

Now Hathaway is a bit down on his luck, and needs that Golden Lion back… Only someone of outstanding wit, with an adventurer’s heart and a keen brain could solve the puzzles, reclaim the Golden Lion and escape the curse… Are you brave enough to answer the call of adventure?

This was the first time I’d made a second visit to an Escape Room, and to feel like I should be confident and yet at the same time so unsure of what to expect was quite a strange experience.

For the most part, it was of course extremely familiar as several of the original puzzles were still in the same form as they were previously. This meant that we made rapid progress early on as thankfully everything came flooding back.

I think the most noticeable changes were that one element of general searching had been removed so the info was more freely available and this streamlining worked well, and a new part had been added further into the room that required having to interact vocally with the environment. This kind of thing always makes me laugh as I always feel like such an idiot doing it, but it does add enormously to the fun. It was certainly one of the most memorable and enjoyable bits for me, and in a room that’s consistently this good that quite an achievement!

I’m pleased to say that with the huge potential to utterly embarrass ourselves by doing worse than last time, we actually managed a pretty respectable time and made off with all four of Hathaway’s knickknacks.

I’m even more pleased to say that not only is the room as good as I remember it being the first time round, but it’s actually improved. Can’t really award it another Disco Ball, but as you can see above, we’ve taken the last one and buffed it up shiny!

Fantastic room.

Result: Escaped with all 4 bonus items in 43 minutes

(Though seeing as it was our second time here it would have been embarrassing if we hadn’t!)

Wirral Escape Rooms – Christmas Confusion

Christmas Confusion

Wirral Escape Rooms

Venue: Wirral Escape Rooms

Room: Christmas Confusion

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, JM

Date: 17/11/2018


It’d been almost a year since we’d last visited Wirral Escape Rooms back in January for the Curse of the Golden Lion which we’d loved, so we couldn’t wait to return for a fun filled frenzy of festive frolics in their Yuletide themed Christmas Confusion.

The Story:
Santa has selected you and your fellow elves to take the prestigious “Christmas Confusion” examination.

Set in the “Living Room 1.0 simulation” – you have 1 hour to complete the puzzles, find the presents and pass your examination, what grade will you get?

It may have only been November, but we donned our Santa hats with no sense of embarrassment and whizzed up the Wirral to Wallasey to be warmly welcomed with the genuine enthusiasm that we’d received from Amy and Ian at Wirral Escape Rooms on our previous visit.

We had a quick chat, but then as were keen to get stuck in, we soon found our merry selves transported to a cosy living room decked out with all the holiday trimmings.

A brief hunt around revealed a few things which set us off in the right direction, and soon led to a good variety of seasonally themed puzzles and tasks including an opportunity for a bit of fun playing with an actual toy to make progress.

From simple substition codes, observational requirements, logic based tasks, and even a musically themed puzzle (which I always love) there was a good mix of family friendly fun to keep all entertained. I think ‘family’ is one of the key words here too as it felt as though the room had maybe been designed with this in mind and therefore was slightly on the easier end of the difficulty scale. We certainly found ourselves making good headway right from the start which is unusual for us, and managed to finish in a really quick time…

Well, a quick time for us anyway.

Christmas Confusion is a seasonal room set up just for the festive period, but don’t let that make you think it’s any less of a great experience. We learned last year when we made a Christmas Eve trip to Lakes Escapes up in Cumbria that temporary rooms can be just as much fun as permanent ones, and the team at Wirral Escape Rooms years of experience made sure that this was also the case here.

I do feel a little guilty for taking so long to get this written up as at the time of publishing the room is currently not available, but fingers crossed it will see a return every year as it certainly deserves to be out there again.

Ho ho ho, loads of fun.

Result: Passed our exam in 36 minutes

Eskape Whitby – A Curious Case

A Curious Case

Eskape Whitby

Venue: Eskape Whitby

Room: A Curious Case

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot

Date: 27/10/2018


We’d really enjoyed our last visit to Eskape Whitby for The Night Watchman but we felt we’d made it harder than it should have been, and had just about managed to scrape through for a win.

Their second room ‘A Curious Case‘ claimed a much lower escape rate, so we were less than optimistic about our chances of repeating our success…

The Story:

CODE RED COMMUNICATION

From: Headquarters at Time and Space Investigation Unit

AGENTS, as the top team at Special Branch we have an urgent and most curious case for you to attend to.

Someone is attempting to invade our world! Using dark magical powers they have managed to cause cracks within space and time, allowing a kind of Wonderland to break through and merge with our reality. If it is not stopped within the next 60 minutes, the whole of our planet will be consumed and become part of this strange kingdom.

You and your team of Time Agents must stop the invasion in time. The world as we know it is counting on you!

Can you save us?

I always feel Whitby is quite an out of the way place for an Escape Room venue and was pleasantly surprised to see one open up there a year or so ago, but it’s a testament to the love and passion that the owners have for the format that has led to to this, their second room opening. It’s difficult not to feel that Eskape Whitby isn’t quite getting the attention it deserves though, and location wise I’m reminded of Lakes Escapes over on the opposite coast who are also a little ‘off the beaten track’ but both are well worth a trip to enjoy what’s on offer.

In most rooms I’ve done the host has usually entered the room with us to give us our briefing, and the clock has started once they’ve exited, but here we were actually given a short ‘in theme’ intro to read and told to enter the room ourselves when ready and the timer would start. As I recall I’ve only encountered something similar once before at ClueHQ in Warrington, and while I imagine this isn’t to everyone’s taste I quite liked it, as it once again stood out for me as something a little different and memorable.

Speaking of starting the clock, that’s one tiny bugbear here… I’ve mentioned this before but I much prefer having some kind of timer in the room so we know exactly where we stand, and I’ve been in a few rooms recently without them. Some venues have gone as far as telling us that we can set a timer going on our phones if we want to, but that tends to break the immersion a bit for me not to mention that I’m constantly low on power. It would be such a minor thing to solve though that I can only imagine that the exclusion of them must be by design rather than anything to do with tech or cost.

Once we got started, we found the room to be eclectically themed (in a good way) and set about our first task of working out how to get clues if we needed them, or rather *when* we needed them if we judge ourselves by our previous experiences. Thankfully, this was nice and easy to solve and revealed a clue method that, while we had seen it before, we hadn’t encountered it frequently, and the fact that it was woven into the story made it more fun.

From the room’s storyline above, it seems clear that A Curious Case is going to contain a nice blend of sci-fi with some familiar fantasy and that’s certainly what we found. This comes together well in a room containing a variety of smaller puzzles which feed to a larger meta goal to progress further. It was great to see a combination of hands on tasks alongside more traditional puzzles some of which would find their source in good old fashioned pen and paper, and these were used in an intelligent and fun way, which fell into place logically once the pieces were there.

As expected, we did need a few clues along the way, but that was more down to us being a bit rubbish rather than anything not making sense, and we eventually tumbled out of the exit to find we’d exceeded the hour by about 3 minutes… but our host had been kind enough to let us finish off as we were so close.

Sadly, still counts as a fail for us as we’re just too damn honest.

In all it’s a great room which we found to be a little tough but fair, and while I’m not sure we saw anything completely new to us, we did find what was there to be used in fun and original ways.

Well worth a visit.

Result: Failed 

(But they let us finish with another 3 minutes)

ClueFinders Liverpool – The Tomb

The Tomb

Clue Finders Liverpool

Venue: ClueFinders Liverpool

Room: The Tomb

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, JM

Date: 22/09/2018


While we’d visited nearly all the other Escape Room venues in Liverpool, I think the main reason we hadn’t got around to visiting Clue Finders before was because the website says the rooms are for three people or more. As the team has mainly been just Mr Carrot and myself it had never really worked out when we’d been juggling availability of people, availability of rooms, plus a number of other factors… until now.

Things finally fell into place which meant we could bring JM along for an attempt at The Tomb.

The Story:
Avid explorer and archaeologist Ernest Peter Sanderson has made the discovery of his life – uncovering no less than 3 tombs, each full of enough treasure to make him rich beyond measure. But before he reaps his reward he discovers a map containing the location of a secret fourth tomb that was thought to only exist in myths, containing a treasure so precious it has never been seen by any living human. Ernest drops everything to hunt down this fourth tomb and bring this treasure home. Unfortunately this was the last anyone ever heard from him.

This was 50 years ago. Now the map has come into your possession – can you track down the tomb, complete Ernest’s life work and take the treasure for your own?

When we drive in to Liverpool for an Escape Room, the parking can easily add another £5.00 or more onto the cost if you’re there at peak time unless you get lucky, so one of the first things to note about Clue Finders is the easy availability of free parking right outside the building. As it says on the Contact bit of their website ‘Yes, there is free parking available outside of the venue and you are welcome to use our car park for the duration of your stay’. Nice, off to a good start then!

We were welcomed inside by our host for a quick chat and the usual safety briefing, before we eagerly ascended a short staircase and entered the room to begin. It was themed as a small office/store room with suitable furnishings and decorations, though we did note that it had quite a low ceiling and was a little cramped with three of us in there. I imagine with any more people it could possibly start to be an issue if trying to be involved with every stage as there just physically wouldn’t be the room for everyone to gather round. I do realise this last point is probably true of almost every room, but it was certainly highlighted for us here.

I think there was maybe one puzzle in this first section that we felt was a little vague and unintuitive, and we’d have struggled with if we hadn’t had a clue. We’d have probably got there in the end with simply trying a certain item everywhere, but then time as ever was against us.

It wasn’t long before we’d opened up the play area a little more though which gave us a lot more breathing space, and I really liked the method through this was achieved. For me, something a little more unusual yet still quite simple as this was, adds a certain sense of making it into more of an ‘adventure’ and makes it stick in your head afterwards.

Throughout the room we found a good variety of puzzles and tasks from simple searches to ordering items, assembling smaller objects to solving a large physical one. With the large one it was clear from the start what needed to be done, but actually doing it was the challenge here and it proved to be a fair bit more difficult than it seemed at first glance. Tricky indeed.

We felt a good sense of progression as we worked our way through as we could see several areas that would need to be tackled one at a time, which also gave us a good idea about how close we might be to the end. This didn’t really help us too much though as we didn’t have a timer in the room… I’ve no idea what people think of this generally, but I do much prefer to be able to keep an eye on the clock so I can prepare for the panic to set in properly!

Despite this small gripe we really enjoyed the room and found enough little flourishes and slightly unusual things to keep us thoroughly entertained, and we’re now looking forward to returning for Remy’s Room.

Result: Escaped in 50 minutes

Escape Reading Queens Walk – The Vampire Slayers

The Vampire Slayers

Escape Reading Queens Walk

Venue: Escape Reading Queens Walk

Room: The Vampire Slayers

The Team: TDM, Nifta

Date: 01/09/2018


I was visiting Nifta and we’d planned a full day of Geocaching around Basingstoke and Reading, rounded off with an Escape Room. I hadn’t read much online about The Vampire Slayers at Escape Reading but from the name it had the potential that we may have to dress up as Buffy to prance about and go through the motions which sounded like fun* (see footnote), so that swung it and I got it booked.

This would be Nifta’s first Escape Room so I was hoping for a couple of obvious things even more than usual… Firstly that it would be good, and secondly that we’d escape, as for Nifta a fail on his first room would be pretty discouraging for him in any future rooms. I was also hoping that our time would go down to the wire, as whereas I realise that lots of people like to complete rooms in as quick a time as possible and go for records, I prefer to get my money’s worth plus it always adds a bit of extra excitement at the end when you cut it fine!

This is of course what you say when like me you need all the time, and maybe if I was a bit better at these things then I’d be going for speed too! Maybe…

All that aside, one thing I can say is that we had a huge amount of fun playing The Vampire Hunters and it therefore gets a

Golden Disco Ball

The Story:
Legend states that the Vampire Lord and his clan awakes every thousand years to appease their thirst for blood.

Your group of explorers have discovered today is the day they will arise to seek their vengeance against the human race.

After navigating our way around Reading’s pretty nightmarish road system, we arrived at Escape Reading’s Queen’s Walk venue quite early and were asked to take a seat in reception. I’ve found that a lot of Escape Room companies tend to have a variety of games, Rubik’s Cube type puzzles, and an assortment of locks such as you might encounter in the room to play around with in the waiting area, but at Escape Reading they’d done something a little different.

They’d made what I’d describe as a mini warm up cabinet that the curious (as we were) are left to discover. It’s actually a old wooden sideboard, which had a note on the top of it… which led to a series of mini puzzles to solve and locks to open. It wasn’t particularly difficult but I thought this was a brilliant idea, as it serves as a great intro for the kind of thing that people should expect if they’ve not played an Escape Room before. Nice touch.

It wasn’t too long before our room was ready though, and our host took us through to the back and down the stairs to where it was located. Going along with the room’s theme he donned a cloak and introduced the story by candlelight, and the fact that he had an genuine eastern European sounding accent was the theatrical cherry on the atmospheric cake. Perfect for the intro. Finally, just before we were let loose, he asked if we wanted the toned down or full on scary version of the room. We went for the full on version after being reassured it wasn’t too scary.

Once inside, we found the room was decorated in a quite Gothic style with lots of dark reds and blacks which set the atmosphere well, although some of the modern padlocks in the room were a little out of place with the rest of the decor. This didn’t really detract from the fun though and we quickly began searching around to sink our (non-fanged) teeth in. I think we probably jumped ahead slightly at the beginning as there was one quite easy puzzle which I imagine was supposed to be the entry point for the room and therefore the first thing you spot and solve, but we struggled with it and kicked ourselves later when we returned to it as it turned out to be a lot more simple than we thought. Thankfully, the room progression wasn’t too linear so we weren’t held up by our own incompetence!

It was nice to see puzzles included that were soloable but definitely expedited with a bit of teamwork, plus there was one that was actually impossible to complete by yourself. It wasn’t really ideal with just two of us either and would have been a lot quicker and easier with three, but we managed ok. I think that creating tasks like this where multiple people have to be involved shows great forethought and puzzle design, as it stops situations where potentially one person could be working on a puzzle while everyone else has to stand by watching like spare parts.

As far as the ‘scare factor’ went in the room, it wasn’t just a case of the odd random jump scare here and there, as alongside a few of those the tension was built up gradually to coincide with certain events happening when things were triggered by us completing tasks. There is always a danger that this kid of thing can feel a little bolted on as an afterthought, but in this case I felt it really enhanced the experience and worked well.

We had to take a few pointers along the way, mainly when we’d got our minds stuck on one line of thought and needed a gentle push to tell us to try something else, and we approached the conclusion with very little time left on the clock. The final bit included a pretty impressive prop/device which later on I realised I’d actually seen before, but typically any recollection of this at a point when it would have helped us had vacated my memory. This was probably a good thing though as this gave us the fun and tension of trying to work out how to solve it with seconds to spare… and it was literally seconds!

Great room, friendly hosts, loads of fun.

Loved it.

*Footnote
Sadly we didn’t have to but that didn’t mean we couldn’t

Result: Slayed the Vampire in 59 minutes

Breakout Liverpool – Classified

Classified

Breakout Liverpool

Venue: Breakout Liverpool

Room: Classified

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, JM

Date: 25/08/2018


Still glowing in a slightly smug yet ‘we can’t quite believe it’ manner from our surprisingly speedy success in The Detective Office, we moved onto our second room of the evening – Classified. We’d heard from a couple of people that this one was quite a toughie, so we tried to ready ourselves by psyching ourselves up into a spy frame of mind… though we were probably feeling a bit more Johnny English than James Bond.

The Story:
The classified room sees players sitting their final entrance exam to become a secret agent. You must escape from the room to pass the exam. This is Breakout’s most explosive and technologically advanced room yet! Think James Bond, Jack Bauer and Lara Croft. Classified is the prequel to Sabotage.

It’s interesting to note that as the story states, the objective for the room is literally to escape from it. A lot of places we’ve played build a story which introduces an element of peril behind the reason why you have to escape (such as you’ve been kidnapped, or you’re in a killer’s lair and they’re on their way back), but Classified’s whole point is that the room has been built for you to escape from as a test… and what a fun test it was.

One of the first things we noticed on entering is just what a large and open space the room is. I think nearly everything we needed to interact with was placed around the walls leaving us plenty of room to spread out for our initial search.

You have to collect a series of objects which then enable you to work out a code to escape. The order isn’t really linear as you could attack the puzzles in any order as you encountered them, though you may have occasionally needed to find a few items first. This meant that we always had something on the go, even if we weren’t quite sure what it was to begin with.

There were a few easy things just lying around waiting to be found to start us off, which progressed into a variety of puzzles – no real theme to them as it seemed a rather deliberate mix to throw as many different types as possible at us, and it was nice to encounter a few practical bits of tech we had to use.

We were stumped a little at one point as we’d found an item that we hadn’t actually found a use for but which definitely looked like we should have to, but we were told later that we’d actually managed to bypass it (though I’m guessing if we had used it it would have sped us up a little), but in the end we managed a pretty respectable time anyway.

Result: Escaped in 44 minutes

Breakout Liverpool – The Detective Office

The Detective Office

Breakout Liverpool

Venue: Breakout Liverpool

Room: The Detective Office

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, JM

Date: 25/08/2018


Following on from the shame of our failure in Warped a month before, Mr Carrot and I were returning to Breakout Liverpool to hopefully claw a bit of self respect back. This time we’d brought JM with us as a reinforcement as we took on two rooms, and first up was The Detective Office.

The Story:
In this tale, a young detective has sadly been murdered in his office and you are being framed as his killer. You are on the run and have gained access to his office, the crime scene, for one hour. Can you save yourself by finding out who killed him, why someone killed him and how they killed him?

I suspect that The Detective Office is one that gets booked a lot for company teambuilding events and suchlike, as there are two identical copies of the room which enables teams to play head to head which can introduce a more competitive element while still being a cooperative activity. No such extra pressure for us though thankfully!

The room is decorated in a ‘noir’ style with a comfy sofa, wooden furniture, and retro movie posters which suits the theme well and sets the tone perfectly.

To start us off there were a few easy bits and pieces to find, which were either very simply hidden or pretty much in plain sight, and there were also a couple of keycode locks that were immediately accessible, where we could see we’d have to work work towards opening them later on as we collected the relevant info.

The puzzles were nicely varied, and while I don’t think there was anything I hadn’t seen before, they were used effectively and worked well for the flow of the room.

I’m not sure whether we were just on form, or if it was because JM brought along the much needed actual ability that myself and Mr Carrot are so often lacking, but we sailed through this room. I think we only hit one stumbling block, which was a hiding spot that we were kicking ourselves about later on. Seems so obvious after the event, but all three of us just completely glossed over it.

A fun room, but definitely at the easier end of the scale of Breakout’s challenges.

Result: Solved the murder in 39 minutes

Breakout Liverpool – Warped

Warped

Breakout Liverpool

Venue: Breakout Liverpool

Room: Warped

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot

Date: 28/07/2018


Despite this being our sixth visit to Breakout Liverpool, this was actually the first time we’d ever ventured into the upstairs bit. As chance would have it, all the rooms we’d tried so far had been down in the basement.

So, as we embarked upon a most excellent adventure through history in Warped, we wondered whether this change of elevation would bring us good fortune or throw us off our game and work against us.

Spoiler alert… it worked against us…

The Story:
Your genius friend has been working on a new project, promising that it will change the way you view the concept of time itself! She reveals she has made her own time machine and invites you to take it for a test run. However, when you show up, she’s nowhere to be seen and has left you instructions to help her recover the items she accidentally left scattered throughout history…

Can you stop this butterfly effect before it destroys the future?

OK, so maybe blaming the unfamiliar floor we were on is a bit of a bad excuse on our part, but despite our poor performance we did have a great time in Warped as it packs quite a bit into what is a fairly small space.

The room has a definite linearity to it, as there are several ‘sections’ which you must progress through, first completing the previous area each time. I imagine in larger groups this could actually prove to be a little problematic as everyone would need to crowd around the same spot and I feel there just wouldn’t be room to do it. Thankfully there was just the two of us though so it wasn’t an issue.

I don’t think it’s any kind of giveaway (given the theme and background story of the room) to say that a form of time travel is involved, and upon visiting certain ‘destinations’ I found myself reliving and reminiscing about some major bits of my youth, complete with soundtrack! Couldn’t keep the grin off my face.

The puzzles themselves were nicely varied, with a fair bit of simple observation, a little relating items to each other, and some quick and easy physical tasks… but then we got to the last bit, and this is where it went a bit wrong.

One of the final puzzles in the room involved fitting something together to reveal a code… so we did, and were absolutely convinced we had it right. We were so convinced that we’d stopped trying to solve it and started looking for something else we may have missed about the code we’d worked out.

What we’d actually missed though, is that the puzzle also fitted together in another way, and as we frantically tried variations of our code the time finally ran out. I have to admit that I initially felt a teeny tiny bit cheated by our failure… but I also have to grudgingly admit that when our host showed us how we should have had it afterwards it was a much better fit and the only people we could blame were ourselves.

Oh well, not had a fail in a while, but it’s always good to see that losing can be so much fun!

Result: Failed

Exit Strategy Liverpool – Nostromo

Nostromo

Exit Strategy Liverpool

Venue: Exit Strategy Liverpool

Room: Nostromo

The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot

Date: 28/07/2018


This was our second and sadly last visit to Exit Strategy as we’d previously played their other room, The Illuminati, so with Nostromo we’d run out of their rooms to play.

The Story:
NOSTROMO…

In Nostromo, you enter an abandoned spacecraft. We suspect that the Reptilians have killed the crew, disabled the critical systems on the craft set it on a course to crash to Earth and fled. In one hour the craft will enter the Earth’s gravitational field, the point of no return. You must convince the onboard computer HAL to change course… but how?

As on our previous visit we were offered complimentary drinks when we arrived which we were allowed to take into the room with us, not that we planned to have time to stop for refreshments once we’d started!

Before visiting I’d read a few reviews which seemed really positive and made clear the fact that Nostromo was a little different to most rooms in that it doesn’t feature any padlocks. That’s not to say there aren’t a couple of keys involved or that you don’t have to work out numbers like you would for combination or normal padlocks… but actual padlocks? A big no!

The decor of the room fitted the theme of an abandoned spacecraft very well, but more in a Red Dwarf style than Star Trek though. Painted in what I would imagine to be the dark grey of a storage hold and with a large retro style display screen it made an immediate good impression.

The room is designed is such a way that you need to keep returning to a central control area after completing each puzzle or task in order to progress. This works well as it also gives you a good idea about how far through the room you are at any given time.

The puzzles themselves were varied and creative with some really nice uses of tech along the way, some of which we’d not encountered before and had obviously been created as custom things for the room.

We did struggle a little on the last part as we were examining and re-examing some quite obvious bits and had missed something quite subtle in the same area. A clue (which came through as the ship’s computer voice) made us focus a little more in the right direction though and we soon had it sussed and made our escape.

This is a great room which reminded me a lot of Armageddon at GamEscape Liverpool (which has now sadly gone) in both it’s style and execution.

I imagine the booking system of having to arrange your booking by phone/text still remains a small barrier for some when it’s easier to book online at other venues, but Exit Strategy is well worth the extra effort for a visit.

Result: Escaped in 49 minutes

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