Unescapable: Alan

Of Unescapable’s games, Alan gives away the fewest clues to its theme – something about finding a missing employee? But there are enough subtle and not so subtle hints in the website details that I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying this is a pirate themed room – though that might not be obvious when the game begins.

This is a game of two halves, and while I’d expect the second half to provide the highlights for most players, I really liked the build up provided by the earlier section – with a great indicator of progress it really managed to create a sense of anticipation.

It also has a clear story that you discover as you go. Much of that comes from a well-thumbed journal. I generally disliked the journal trope in games, but that’s when it’s used to give cryptic scrawled clues, often mixed in with intentional red herrings; here it was used purely to deepen the story, and worked well.

Most of Unescapable’s games require crawling. Alan is perhaps the most physical of them all – but only one player needs to do that section. (If you have a larger group who are all eager to dive in, it could get cramped!)

Comparing Alan to Mary, Mary had more in the way of particular stand out moments, whereas I really enjoyed exploring the environment that Alan provided. As with Mary I thought our host wasn’t slow to chime in with advice; in places the nudges helped smooth over uneven signposting, such as steering us away from wasting time over a puzzle that looked solvable but actually needed information that we didn’t yet have.

My impression was that Alan had the greatest number of actual puzzles of the four games in the venue, and was probably the most challenging. Many felt squarely in the classic escape room style, though nicely themed, but there are certainly a couple of larger, stand-out highlights, and more importantly the game adds up to more than the sum of its parts. My favourite at the venue is probably still their Edith horror game, but since that won’t appeal to all tastes, Alan is the game I’d consider the safest choice – though frankly it’s hard to go wrong with any of the rooms here.