Quality over quantity? While April hasn’t been the busiest month for new UK escape rooms, but there’s some potential good additions for your ‘want to play’ list here. Or maybe for your ‘need to play’ list.

Greater London

🔒 Immersive theatre company COLAB have launched an escape room experience called The End, an actor-led game with an apocalyptic theme that I suspect will be strong on the narrative as well as the puzzles. It’s running Thurs-Sat through to June, and I believe it’s on a public booking basis (up to 6 players per slot).

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Screamworks (East London): The Briefcase

South East England

🔒 The Bracknell branch of Pier Pressure (until recently Puzzalogical) opened new magic heist game Siege of Spellbreak Bank. I believe it replaces the previous bank heist room but doesn’t share any content with it.

🔒 Sip ‘n’ Solve from Other World Escapes in Portsmouth have added a bunch more of their 15 min puzzle pods. The new additions are: Atlantis Discovery Submarine, Life Finds A Way, Merlin’s Tree of Life, The Lost City, and The Witch’s Cauldron.

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Escape Windsor: Avalanche
🐣 Exciting Escapes Basingstoke: The Grouch Who Stole Easter!
🔒 Immersion Escape Rooms (Alton): Blitz
🐣 TimeQuest (Paddock Wood): Bunny Vale

South West England

🔒 Newton Abbot’s Devon Escape have swapped out their oldest game and replaced it with Prison Break: Uprising, a prison escape theme set in a dystopian England, open from tomorrow.

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Co-Decode (Swindon): Pieces of Eight
🔒 Hidden Valley Discovery Park (Launceston): The Study
🔒 Housetrap Escape Rooms (Bodmin): Tomb
🔒 Lock & Code Escape Rooms Weston (Weston-super-mare): The Archives

Wales

From last month’s update:
🔒 Puzzled Escape Rooms (Cardiff): Going Up

West Midlands

🔒 The forthcoming room from Telford’s XscapeNow sounds like it’ll be their largest and most ambitious yet – a high-budget 90 min experience with multiple actors. Sultan’s Secret – Grand Edition opens on 20 May.

🔒 Exciting Game in Birmingham have opened a ‘Escafe’ which can be booked in 90 min slots for up to four people. They offer beverages plus a choice of envelope-based home escape games, or mini puzzle games, or their new tabletop escape game The Order Of The Seven.

🔒 Welcome to the Jungle is the newest room at Courtyard Escapes in Stourbridge. I believe this Jumanji-style story is one that also exists in some other locations.

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Alderford Escape Islands (Whitchurch): Moonshine After Dark, The Lost Pharaoh
🔒 Escape Quests (Ross-on-Wye): Save Sugarvale
🔒 The Commandery (Worcester): The Servant’s Secret

East Midlands

🔒 Now open at Escape Coalville, The Adventurer’s Club is an adventure rescue game set in the 1930s, where you need to rescue a missing explorer.

🔒 Forest Mystery near Coalville added viking-themed Key to the Valhalla to their selection of outdoor escape rooms.

🎭 Outdoor adventure venue Forest Facility now have an outdoor puzzle trail game called Spy Hunt, along with their bunker escape room.

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Chesterfield Escape Rooms: The Inside Job

East of England

🔒 A new game at EO Escape Rooms in Sudbury is always cause for excitement, and fantasy mission The Marauder’s Lair is now open. This is an expanded version of the popup they ran by the same name, but “the majority of the game and puzzles are brand new”.

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Funky Snake Escape (Leighton Buzzard): The Order
🔒 The No Work Club (Peterborough): Medusa, The Mirror, Time

North West England

🔒 Breakout Chester: There are now multiple places you can go for an experience inspired by The Traitors TV show (including the official one in London), and I initially assumed The Faithful at Breakout Chester was another – but it seems it’s this one’s a genuine escape room that uses the show as a premise for an hour of puzzle-solving.

🔒 The child-friendly escape room at Z-arts in Manchester has had consistently great reviews since it opened. They’ve now opened a new room Mission: Mad Hatter; this one is “part scavenger hunt, part escape room, and part computer game”, and is intended to be suitable for adults as well as for children aged 9+.

🔒 It’s been some time since Escape Stockport changed their lineup, but they’ve now replaced Game of Spy’s with The Vampires Curse – a Study in Terror.

Yorkshire and the Humber

🔒 The Sheffield branch of Escape Hunt opened The Chocolate Factory, a new design for the chain.

🎭 Escapologist in Cleethorpes now offer an experience called The Unfaithfuls alongside their escape rooms; as you might guess from the name, this is not a puzzle room but a game inspired by The Traitors.

Scotland

🔒 Entertainment centre LVLS Aberdeen now offers escape rooms, with four designs that you may recognise from the Escape group: 221B Baker Street, Demon Barber, Magic Emporium, and Prison Breakout.

🔒 Game Vault in Kilmarnock opened new room Bomb Squad – sounds like this one will go with a bang.

🔒 The Bubbling Toad in Midlothian now have a second escape room alongside The Puzzlery: this one is a family-friendly game called The Druid’s Box.

Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Bell Pettigrew Museum of Natural History (St Andrews): Code to the Crown
🔒 Riddle Rooms (Glasgow): Burns Room Teens