Category Archives: Reading

Knockout Escape Rooms: Prison Break

Reading, Aug 2018

Prison Break was Knockout’s easiest game and their best-decorated. A prison setting often means cramped cells, usually with a split team start, but they’ve instead used a much larger space here, which combines prison bars with a more open layout. The… (more)

Knockout Escape Rooms: 9-to-5 Assassin

Reading, Aug 2018

The premise for 9 To 5 Assassin is that you’re trapped in an office trying to get out before a professional killer returns. ‘Office’ is a bit of a red flag in a room description – if you have a large budget to spent on making your escape room look fa… (more)

Knockout Escape Rooms: Mad Scientist

Reading, Aug 2018

Knockout cheerfully warned us up front that they go for quite minimal backstory with their games. In this case the plot was essentially that you’re in a mad scientist’s laboratory and need to solve puzzles to escape – but delivered in a nicely light-… (more)

TimeTrap Escape Rooms: The Divide

Reading, Aug 2018

There are all sorts of potential pitfalls involved in attempting to build an escape room that addresses serious social issues – in this case inequality and homelessness. Being designed as entertainment, a game could easily come across as mocking, pat… (more)

TimeTrap Escape Rooms: Rebellion – 1136

Reading, Mar 2018

Few escape games open with an explanation of one of the more obscure parts of English history, but Rebellion does and pulls it off smoothly. As the intro succinctly explains, you’re travelling back to the 12th century to retrieve the royal crown for … (more)

Escape Reading: The Vampire Slayers

Reading, Mar 2018

Horror rooms are a varied lot, and can be anything from puzzle-driven games with a few blood splatters and fake severed fingers to set the scene, through to full on terror experiences where solving anything is complicated by flickering lights and cha… (more)

Escape Reading: Kidnapped

Reading, Mar 2018

The first of the two horror themes we tried at Escape Reading’s central branch was Kidnapped, which avoids outright scares in favour of building a subtle creepy atmosphere. (For those who hate jump scares, there should be little to worry about here.)… (more)

Escape Reading: The Bank Robbery

Reading, Mar 2018

Bank Robbery is one of the two games at Escape Reading’s original branch, located on the west side of the city. I frequently book games without reading their descriptions very closely, and I’d assumed from the name we’d be robbing a bank. Instead, th… (more)

Deadlocked Escape Rooms: The Testing Chamber

Reading, Jan 2018

There are not many computer games I’ve played in the last eighteen years, but one of the few I have is Portal. If you’re also familiar with that, then you’ll recognise immediately the tongue-in-cheek dark humour of Testing Chamber. This game starts w… (more)

Deadlocked Escape Rooms: The Phoenix Research

Reading, Jan 2018

Located on the west side of Reading, Deadlocked currently have two games. Their first is Phoenix Research, named for the documents you’re trying to retrieve: the critical notes of a missing scientist employed by the dubious Wexell Corporation.

If yo… (more)