Escape Reality Birmingham: Iron Kingdom

Our GM was brilliant - poor bloke was running 5 rooms alone yet was still with us in no time if we needed him. 

The theming of the room was good  (very Game of Thrones). The theme followed through every section of the room. It was good, although some bits were maybe a bit cheap.

One thing we loved about this company was the tablet for QR scanning for hints and clues - we'd never had this before and thought this was great. Our GM was also on hand if needed, by pressing a switch that lit something at the desk letting him know that we required assistance. The GM coming into the room to assist did kind of break the immersive experience, but we knew this before we booked so we can't complain!

We didn't need a lot of help for this room - any help we did need was because, as usual, I had failed to search thoroughly. There were some interesting puzzles, things we hadn't seen before. 

Will definitely return to Escape Reality to do some of their other rooms.

Not having seen Game of Thrones, I didn't quite 'get' the theme until someone explained it afterwards. It was OK but nothing special.

I really enjoyed this and can't wait to visit Escape Reality again, especially to do their harder rooms! The reasons I couldn't give 5 stars is because it was less atmospheric than previous rooms I've done. The story introduction is explained by the Games Master, so there's no real effort there. And the set was quite flat with textureless wall paper. The puzzles are good though. We had a great time. 

Good theme, a couple of quite original puzzles and great set dressing/props. One of the better ones here. 

The room was very dark which I didn’t feel was totally necessary for the theme of the room. The room was well designed and in keeping with the theme. Unfortunately there were a few dealbreakers which lead to my lower rating. Firstly there is a system where you ask for a clue specifically for one task and it is clear which task the clue is for. However, the answer we received was for the wrong task which led to the host coming into the room and realising we had the wrong clue - this took up time, broke immersion and gave us a clue for later that I’d have liked to try and figure out myself. It turned out the task had also been tampered with hence our being stuck and also took up time that then led to us going over at the end. The host almost seemed to suggest they were doing us a favour by allowing us to stay 2 extra minutes to escape. One further element later in the game did not work and the host came in to help.

If everything had gone as it should, the rating would be quite high but that is even more frustrating!

The concept is fun and there are some great puzzles but it felt a little bit ambiguous at times, although this could be due to us skipping ahead and having to go back on ourselves. Some nice Easter eggs for GOT fans.