Author Archives: escapethereview

Claustrophobia: Museum of Contemporary Art

Berlin, Nov 2017

Museum of Contemporary Art is a straightforward heist game, but one that uses its museum setting to build a series of puzzles around modern art pieces, most of which are lightly veiled versions of actual famous pieces. Some of the clues left for you … (more)

Claustrophobia: Vault 13

Berlin, Nov 2017

Anyone who’s spent enough time playing the right computer games will immediately recognise the name of this game as a reference to the Fallout series, and Vault 13 follows the original starting premise of those games: you survived a nuclear apocalyps… (more)

Time 2 Escape: You’re Next

Strood, Dec 2017

I was frankly a little apprehensive about playing You’re Next; it was clearly a horror theme, and with no website other than a Facebook page and a location in the Medway suburbs Time 2 Escape looked like a fairly low overhead operation. While there’s… (more)

The Panic Room: North Pole Panic

Gravesend, Dec 2017

It’s December, and along with other signs of the season such as tinsel, fake snow and endless Wham replays, quite a number of escape room companies are offering Xmas-themed games. The Panic Room’s take on this gives you the task of helping Santa’s el… (more)

Exit: The Forbidden Castle

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2017

Last of the Exit games until they finish translating the next four in the series, Forbidden Castle is marked as a harder game (4/5 difficulty, where Polar Station and Forgotten Island are marked as 3/5) and is my favourite so far. It follows the usua… (more)

Exit: The Forgotten Island

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2017

It was Forgotten Island that finally made me surrender and start playing the Exit games in a way that marked the components – though so far still only in ways that I could reverse to restore everything to its original condition. But for most players … (more)

Exit: The Polar Station

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2017

The remarkably prolific Exit series of play at home escape games are now up to ten games in their native German, and the second batch of three are now available in English. They follow closely the format established by the previous boxes, with a few … (more)

Escape The Crate: Chapter 5: Escape the Lost Colony

Room-in-a-box, Nov 2017

A small disappointment with the Crate series has always been that despite the name they actually arrive as a plain brown cardboard box. The fifth chapter is a nice step up in this respect – although it’s certainly not an actual crate, it’s now a much… (more)

Skurrilum: Die Phantominsel (The Phantom Island)

Hamburg, Nov 2017

Fresh out of Skurrilum’s Malvini game, we plunged into the pirate-themed Phantom Island. A few eyebrows were raised when they handed out four head-mounted torches between five players, but fortunately it turned out to be decently lit throughout the g… (more)

Skurrilum: Malvinis Vermächtnis (Malvini’s Legacy)

Hamburg, Nov 2017

Skurrilum’s reputation precedes them, and we added on a side trip to Hamburg purely to try out their games. Frustratingly, only two of their five games are currently available in English, with the rest requiring fluent German, but we eagerly booked i… (more)