Category Archives: UK

Escapologic: Reactorvate

Leicester, Aug 2018

Reactorvate eschews the obvious plot for a game set in a nuclear power station in favour of a more complicated premise: your great uncle was blamed for a catastrophic meltdown, and your aim is to sneak into the abandoned station, find data to clear h… (more)

Escapologic: Operation Magnus

Leicester, Aug 2018

Tempted up to Leicester by a remarkably generous summer discount for returning customers, I finally tried out the first three games at Escapologic’s new branch, starting with Operation Magnus, which places you in a World War 2 bunker trying to foil a… (more)

Break Escape: The Enchanted Forest

Loughborough, Aug 2018

Some game reviews are straightforward to write, others are not; this is one of the tricky ones. But let’s start by saying Enchanted Forest is Break Escape’s fourth and newest (so far) room, and places you in a magical snowbound forest which contains … (more)

Break Escape: Boiling Point

Loughborough, Aug 2018

As might not be instantly clear from the name, Boiling Point is set in a police station. Your task is to retrieve the critical evidence needed to put away each of a gang of ne’er-do-wells; however, since the gang in question are understandably not ke… (more)

Break Escape: Nerve Klinik

Loughborough, Aug 2018

First, a disclaimer: we played a bowdlerised version of Nerve Klinik, due to a teammate’s aversion to jump scares. Since this is a game designed from the ground up to scare its players and keep them nervous of what might happen next, that removed an … (more)

Break Escape: The Sands of Time

Loughborough, Aug 2018

Don’t make a room unnecessarily dark; or if you do, make sure every player has a satisfactorily strong source of light. That’s a subjective opinion, and not everyone agrees with it, but it’s one I’ll argue for until I’m blue in the face. If it’s an o… (more)

Cryptic Escapes: The Treasure of Green Beard

Norwich, Aug 2018

Since this review is inevitably going to degenerate into a rant about ‘good’ difficulty versus ‘bad’ difficulty in escape rooms, let’s start on a more positive note. The Treasure of Green Beard is nicely presented, a traditionally structured escape r… (more)

Puzzlescape: Sleight of Hand

Norfolk, Aug 2018

On my last visit to Puzzlescape eighteen months earlier, Dereham in Norfolk seemed an exotically obscure location for an escape game; with the way the industry has expanded since then, it now seems entirely normal. In the meantime they’ve expanded fr… (more)

History Mystery: Body of Evidence

Norwich, Aug 2018

Where History Mystery’s first game is situated upstairs at the Norwich Guildhall, their second is in the basement of the same building, in what used to be gaol cells right up to the 1980s. The booking confirmation warns players that the cell graffiti… (more)

History Mystery: The Merchants’ Vaults

Norwich, Aug 2018

Having located their previous games in Norwich’s Guildhall and in a historic church, History Mystery’s latest is set the medieval undercroft below Brideswell Museum. This is a ghostly grey space of elegant ancient arches and crumbling walls, simultan… (more)