Category Archives: Oxford

Escape Hunt: Worlds Collide

Oxford, Feb 2019

While there are any number of escape rooms that carefully skirt intellectual property laws with thinly veiled ‘homages’ to popular franchises, fully licensed games are much rarer, and so it was with much fanfare that Escape Hunt announced their offic… (more)

Escape Hunt: Escape The Wild West

Oxford, Feb 2019

Picking a game for the afternoon slot at Escape Hunt’s Oxford branch was a choice between pirates and cowboys, and we chose the latter. Wild West casts you as lucky but imperilled miners: having discovered a rich seam of gold in a remote and dusty fr… (more)

Ex(c)iting Game: Project: The Diamond

Oxford, Mar 2017

Ex(c)iting Games’ second room is refreshingly well-lit, a relief after Warehouse. It also has a novel twist: in the briefing we were warned that a security guard might sometimes look into the room, so when we heard footsteps we had ten seconds to hid… (more)

Ex(c)iting Game: The Warehouse

Oxford, Mar 2017

Ex(c)iting Games is a small independent company conveniently located right next to the Headington bus stop on the route to London, and Warehouse was the first of their two rooms that we played.

My heart sunk rather in the pre-game briefing when the … (more)

City Mazes: Star Breaker

Oxford, Feb 2017

If you’re reading these reviews in order, you’ll have noticed that I wasn’t hugely impressed with City Mazes. Entering their fourth and allegedly hardest room I thought things were looking up. As with their other games, Star Breaker is divided into t… (more)

City Mazes: Control Room 54

Oxford, Feb 2017

I should note up-front that there was a third of this game that I didn’t directly see, since for a large part of it the team is divided between two rooms, and I was shut in one small office while my two team-mates dealt with the adjacent area.

As yo… (more)

City Mazes: Operation Spaced X

Oxford, Feb 2017

You start this game in an empty white room, with no visible puzzles or clues. This is the second game I’ve played that used this idea, which I believe is ‘inspired’ by a famous room in Budapest, and of the two I’ve done this is the more successful im… (more)

City Mazes: Pandora’s Escape

Oxford, Feb 2017

The Oxford branch of City Mazes has four rooms, and Pandora is listed as the easiest. If going to this venue, be warned that it’s some distance from the town centre, out by the southern ring-road – though this review is unlikely to persuade you to ma… (more)