Devon Escape: Professor Enright’s Enigma

On my last trip to Devon two years ago, there were a handful of rooms available from three companies, all located in Exeter and Plymouth. Much has changed and at time of writing there are 14 venues spread out across the country. This time round we started our visit at Devon Escape in Newton Abbot, which was a fortunate choice since the enthusiast owner was very understanding when our journey there took far longer than expected and we arrived 40 minutes late. (When looking for them online, note t...

Overview

This was our second visit to Devon Escape with this being our ‘home’ venue. We really enjoyed our first visit a couple of months ago when we completed Death On Dartmoor and we were looking forward to taking on Professor Enigma. 

Although it is tucked away, there is a big car park a couple of minutes down the road so no issues getting there. We were again greeted by Emma and a new assistant in training. The briefing was a little bit staggered due to both of the them doing bits of it and it didn’t feel as smooth as our first visit. Covid rules had gone by the time of our visit so no need for masks but there was hand sanitiser if we wished to use it.

Room impression

We walked up the staircase to a locked door (which you have to solve before you can get into the room) and everything was pretty standard in terms of theme and props. You could see where everything was and one prop that would come into play later on did stand out easily. The room was quite dim but we didn’t struggle to see throughout. The room looked a little tired but it all did it’s job.

Puzzles

Whether we were too focused on our roast coming later in the day, we all said afterwards that we really struggled to get into this game. After reading other reviews, we aren’t the only ones. It just didn’t flow for us and normally we all bring something to the table to get us in our flow but we couldn’t get our grove. Emma obviously could see this throughout and gave us about half a dozen nudges when we were off course but we didn’t really enjoy it, particularly the first puzzle. The majority of the puzzles were hidden under lock and code but the brain teasers were quite tricky and myself in particular was getting quite frustrated during the game.

Game Master Clues

As mentioned, Emma could here and see everything we were doing so nudged us when we needed it, which we did. A chime came out of the tv when a message was put up in the corner of the room. As mentioned by other reviews, earlier hints if we were going way off target would have been nice but I understand this is difficult when you want to leave teams to it. 

Round Up

Although we escaped, just, we really did think for a huge chunk of this game that we wouldn’t complete it due to either the complexity or our poor form in the day? We all spoke afterwards and we all agreed that we didn’t seem to enjoy it for some reason. The game didn’t really flow and although the concept was quite simple, the puzzles just felt quite random in some parts. We are glad that we did Death On Dartmoor previously because if this was the first room we had done at Devon Escape, we might not have come back.

Worth doing if you are in the area but not our favourite and do Death On Dartmoor!!