Escapism Chester – The Missing
Venue: Escapism Chester
Room: The Missing
The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, D
Date: 01/10/2017
We’d been told by the staff on previous visits to Escapism Chester that The Missing was their absolute pièce de résistance, and everything they’d learned from the ideas and construction of their first four rooms had been taken into account in the design. This sounded good to us, so we’d done the other four rooms first and deliberately saved this one as the icing on the cake!
We were tackling it as a team of three for a change, as myself and Mr Carrot were joined by D in what was only his second room, after Vacancy at Breakout Chester back in May which was also my first room.
The Story:
Some people enter the forest to never be seen again… What happens to them and why can they never be found?
Their last known location has always been the same. You and your friends have been sent to explore the area to try and investigate the missing. Can you solve the mystery of The Missing or will you too be lost forever?
Following the usual safety briefing, we were led to the door where we were all handed head torches, and following a quick battery check it was a relief to see they were actually good quality bright LED ones.
Once in the room, we found ourselves on the doorstep of a cabin in the woods, the construction of which was extremely solid and impressive, and after searching around it seemed that gaining entry would be our first goal, which proved to be a excellent workout for the senses.
The interior of the place was equally well constructed, and the whole room had a great mix of searching, extremely simple lo-tech puzzles (used very effectively), plus some well used hidden tech alongside more tactile physical tasks – a bit of everything in fact which all went together brilliantly.
There were a few bits where good communication and teamwork were essential, which is always satisfying to see as sometimes individual team members can miss out on certain elements as people rush through things against the ever ticking clock. Including puzzles that require teamwork like this are a good way of ensuring this doesn’t happen and in my opinion shows excellent foresight where design is concerned.
I don’t think we did too badly as far a needing clues were concerned, though we definitely needed a gentle push with one of them as we’d got the solution but not quite the right method.
This was actually the second ‘Cabin in the Woods’ themed room we’d done in Chester in a short space of time as we’d done Forsaken at Breakout Chester about two weeks before, and while Forsaken was an excellent room and maybe edges ahead in terms of atmosphere, I’d say that The Missing pips it at the post as far as puzzle design and story flow goes. When the Escapism Chester team said they’d upped their game with this one over their previous rooms, they weren’t wrong.
All in all an excellent room, though we were a little sad on completion as this meant we’d exhausted all the rooms at the venue… however, we were told that a new room should be opening in early 2018 to replace Area 51 which is being retired. We look forward to returning!
