Category Archives: International

The Game: The Far West

Paris, Sep 2023

I try hard to rate games in an objective way, to the limited extent that’s possible with something as inherently subjective as enjoyment of escape rooms. By which I mean, I attempt to put less weight on considerations that are specific to me or that … (more)

Lock Academy: The Examination

Paris, Sep 2023

The premise of The Examination is unusual for Lock Academy – because this is your graduation exam. The test is overseen by an AI assistant, and assesses a variety of skills that have a suspicious degree of overlap with the skills needed to beat an es… (more)

Lock Academy: Revolt At Lock Academy

Paris, Sep 2023

Each room at Lock Academy is different and distinctive, but after playing a few of them you start to recognise a house style to the puzzles and the game structure. I’m not going to give away the plot, but Revolt starts off with the (fictional) founde… (more)

Masterio: La Pierre de Lumière

Paris, Sep 2023

As part of the briefing (which, as normal in Paris, was not at all brief), we were asked to assign ourselves to roles: ranger, mage, dwarf, bard. Each role had a special characteristic. (Hot tip: mage is the best one.) Which should make clear the the… (more)

One Hour: L’Expédition Maudite

Paris, Sep 2023

I wasn’t sure exactly what type of expedition this was, other than “a cursed one”; the answer is that it’s an archaeological expedition, where the previous team of explorers have failed to return from a trip down a mineshaft. Our host explained, in a… (more)

Unleash: L’expedition Aronnax

Paris, Sep 2023

The genre of submarine games can be broadly divided into steampunk and non-steampunk variants, and if you’ve read your Jules Verne the name of this one will make it clear that it’s of the former type. And where other rooms with similar themes only ta… (more)

Experience Dresden: Huntingdon

Dresden, Sep 2023

Is Huntingdon an escape room? In most respects it is, but the emphasis and the experience are different enough that you should try hard not to bring to it any preconceptions about how escape rooms normally work.

Where many rooms introduce the story … (more)

Gamescape Kraków: Klątwa Smoka

Kraków, Sep 2023

With only a day to spend in the beautiful historic city of Kraków, we… booked ourselves into an impulse escape room, of course. Gamescape is out to the west of the centre, but close enough to be walkable, and has a sufficiently large selection of roo… (more)

Mystery Machinery: Laboratorium Tesli

Katowice, Sep 2023

Located in a shopping centre out by the Katowice Załęże station on the west side of the city, Mystical Machinery have seven escape rooms and a laser tag arena; when we visited, the lobby was full of excited children with plastic guns. They also have … (more)

Mind Maze: Galactic Pioneers

Prague, Aug 2023

Every spaceship develops potentially catastrophic problems at some point in its journey, and every spaceship can be fixed by sufficient fiddling with electronic panels and screens. That, at least, is what I’ve learned from escape rooms. In Galactic P… (more)