Category Archives: UK

Room Lockdown: Escape the Curse of King Anum

London, Sep 2017

Our third Room Lockdown game was their Egyptian themed room, where the team is of course trapped inside an ancient pyramid with an hour to solve the pharaoh’s riddles or be trapped forever.

Different games make wildly differing attempts at creating … (more)

Room Lockdown: Prison Break

London, Sep 2017

Next up at Room Lockdown was Prison Break, which naturally involves you breaking out of gaol. Expect a split team start and some impressively authentic restraints.

As with their Doll game, this was a game that I enjoyed playing despite what sometime… (more)

It’s taken me a long time to get out to the cluster of games at Room Lockdown in Hornchurch, partly because it’s a longer journey than some venues outside London, and partly because I had low expectations for the games. The company has five different… (more)

Escape Time: Sam’s Saloon

Birmingham, Sep 2017

The second game we played at Escape Time is also the second one created by the venue (at time of writing, they’ve just announced their upcoming third game), and has a Wild West theme. That’s a style of game that seems curiously neglected by escape ro… (more)

Escape Time: Bank Heist

Birmingham, Sep 2017

Escape Time is in Sutton Coldfield on the outskirts of Birmingham, a quick drive or a long bus journey out from the centre of the city. It’s an enthusiast-run venue which currently has two games, with a third under construction. We played both games … (more)

Can You Escape: Operation H.E.R.O.

York, Sep 2017

This is the second room I’ve tackled from the excellent Can You Escape team, the first being the spaceship themed Operation Odyssey in Edinburgh.

There’s some similarity between their two locations, both hosted upstairs in generic over-shop office … (more)

Clue HQ Birmingham: Captain Riddle’s Forgotten Fortune

Birmingham, Sep 2017

Whispers on the grapevine (okay, mainly Facebook) suggested that with Captain Riddle, Clue HQ had upped their game and built something quite special, so it was a priority for our visit to Birmingham. Actually, it’d probably have been a priority anyho… (more)

Clue HQ Birmingham: A-I-9

Birmingham, Sep 2017

I’m a sucker for most sci-fi themes, so with a choice of games for a morning slot at Clue HQ’s Birmingham branch I went straight for A-I-9’s story of battling a rogue artificial intelligence. Also, the alternatives were their Cell Block C and Bunker … (more)

ClueCapers: Rescue from Winchokey

Winchester, Sep 2017

Winchokey is ClueCapers’ second escape room, and has a prison escape theme – hence the ‘chokey’ in the name. The venue frames its games as excursions through a portal into a parallel universe, and here your task is to rescue a fellow portal traveller… (more)

ClueCapers: Mission to Winchintzy

Winchester, Sep 2017

ClueCapers have memorably idiosyncratic names for their games, and it was some time after I’d first heard of them that I realised the name Winchintzy referred to the theme: chintz. The official storyline has you travelling through a portal into a par… (more)