Escape Hunt Manchester: Worlds Collide

Doctor, Who…Designed This Terrible Room

I had a Virgin Experience voucher and so brought a team of four…regretfully. This room is pants!

Story

Seal a tear in the fabric of space/time before the Cybermen break through it and take over the world.

Puzzles

The puzzles made little sense, and there was a least two occasions we’d completed a challenge without even realising. The steps required for the final ‘action’ were janky.

Mise en scene

Having never watched an episode of Doctor Who, my grasp of the few references scattered about must mean they lacked depth. I was expecting an immersive, high-tech, sci-fi adventure, but what we got was little more than a generic, uninspired half study/half laboratory mishmash.

Final Comments

The posters advertising this room make it look exciting, but Worlds Collide needs to be closed and re-thought.

This room was filled with red herrings and broken tech. Out of the 5 main puzzles, 1 was completely correct but wasn't accepted until the second go, 1 was designed so that the actual puzzle didn't work and the item just fell out, 1 was discovered on accident, 1 was made out to be much more difficult and then had an anti-climactic solution when the item needed was just found elsewhere. Also for a Doctor Who themed escape room, they really didn't include as many references as I was hoping.

We came to this room for a birthday treat for a Doctor Who fan’s birthday, and sadly, it thoroughly disappointed. To start with, we were waiting nearly half an hour after our booking time to go in. We were told that there was some broken tech in the room, but not to worry as the game was fixed and was now in full working order! Also, that we wouldn’t be penalised for time and would still get our full time. Well, thank goodness for that!! We were greeted at the door by Scott, who was lovely, upbeat and really got us in the mood. And we got into the room and our immediate impression was good - it was quite a good looking room and we set to trying to solve puzzles. Unfortunately, from this point our experience just went from bad to worse. At all sorts of points either the tech didn’t work properly, or bits of the game were missing completely, or our host was not paying attention to our gameplay and had failed to notice exactly where we were in the game (at more than one point a puzzle had been solved for about 5 minutes, before suddenly “the game” caught up!); often the problem was a combination of these. After muddling through with all sorts of ongoing issues and things not triggering or working properly, we eventually reached a point near the end of the game where we needed an item that we were *repeatedly* saying was not where it should be. At which point the host told us on the audio that this malfunction often happened and to just play on without the object. As we tried to complete the final set piece, though, we were repeatedly prompted to use this missing object and were sent round and round in circles for ages, trying to solve the final puzzle without it. It was increasingly frustrating and actually made a couple of us rather cross as we always like to try and beat a leaderboard time, and time was ticking away. This should never have been allowed to happen. Eventually the end of the game triggered, and we were able to exit, in a very anticlimactic way, to be met by a different host - Hannah, who was I think the one who had taken us through the game itself. I think, without us being rude (I actually apologised for having got a bit annoyed inside the room towards the end!), we made obvious that we had not had a good time. Now, maybe she was having an off day; but, instead of an apology, and an attempt to make up to us our wasted time and money, she just seemed uninterested and said that the broken things “happen all the time”. When a venue has just taken over £130 from team for an hour’s play you really don’t expect such poor service. We have also yet to receive our team photo. This room was such an incredible disappointment, with only one star awarded for the set dressing and theming of the room, and another half for Scott enthusiasm at the start. It really was scraping the bottom of the barrel though and I wouldn’t go back to this Manchester venue of Escape Hunt, however well their other games are rated. Definitely avoid. 

Not so much padlock and code as more puzzle driven, but the sets (and license) make up for it. If you like Doctor Who, you will like this. 

We liked the first part of this room but the second part wasn't as good. There was a puzzle that was very heavy and my team mate had to complete it as I couldn't manouvere it. We also could have done with something to write notes on as there was a word puzzle which I was struggling to remember in my head. Bit of a let down 

Could of been any kind of proffessor game, not very original. 

I'd wanted to play this room for a long time because I'm a Doctor Who fan, and also the higher price and minimum three players made it seem like it was going to be something special. I think when it first opened it was something like £33pp for a minimum 3 people, so at £100 a game that was more than we'd usually pay and we expected something premium. 

Since then it's come down to £27 each for 2 players, so we decided to give it a go. 

The first part of the game involves a bit of a celebrity voice cameo, which is a good start to the game and lets you know that this is an officially licenced room, and not just a homage. Unfortunatley that's about as exciting as the official stuff got. The first area of the game is quite nicely put together, and evokes the right mood for what it is. It does look pretty premium, though not especially exciting in comparison to other similar rooms. It took us a little while to get going after missing some fairly obvious clues, but we got through it eventually. 

The second area is a bit... boring? It's kind of hi-tech, but also pretty plain, with some random puzzles laid out. Some of these we found quite easy (we were told that we'd done of the harder ones quicker than most) but then others were a bit frustrating as we kept trying to solve things we hadn't quite got enough parts for yet, or just couldn't quite work out. That's perhaps us being rubbish though! haha

The Doctor Who decor is ok, but nothing that really blows you away. A Couple of obvious props as part of puzzles don't really make it feel like this was done with love. Take those away and this could have just been a generic scientist room. 

If anything, it just lacks a big finale. Either filmed, some special effects, or with a live actor invading the space, you'd expect something a bit more exciting for a premium priced room, but it just finishes the same as any other. Even 'Their Finest Hour' at the same location has a good final moment, and that's much more low key. 

I should have been put off Doctor Who rooms for life by this, but thankfully we did the Dalek room in Birmingham and really enjoyed that. It's small, but fun. 

I just couldn't get into this one. Some of the clues and puzzles didn't seem very clear on what you had to do. And it took us a good 10 minutes to even get started. Another one of the not so great ones by the Escape Hunt franchise.

Didn't like this room and would not recommend. Too much narration from the host instead of things being intuitive (ie "great, you found the xxx, now put it in the machine"). Not a big fan of any escape hunt rooms to be honest. 

We were really excited to play this room being big Doctor Who fans and were prepared to pay the premium price for what we were led to believe would be an amazing experience, unfortunately it wasn’t.

So much of the tech was broken or missing, the puzzles were illogical and we left feeling let down.  A real disappointment for a pricey game and the worst we’ve done in 100+ games.

Not worth the money unless you just want to mess about in a room and are not bothered about the overall experience.

Escape Hunt rooms are always brilliant - but this one was maybe just too much for just the 2 of us. 

The first bit of the room was fine, breezed through that no problem. But the second bit was quite time consuming. One task/puzzle took a very long time to complete as the equipment was just not quite up to scratch, had definitely seen better days. 

The theming was ok. The puzzles were a bit nonsensical and were clearly too much for us as we failed to escape! Our GM reckoned we were about 5 mins away from finishing. 

I was super excited to finally play this room being a big Doctor Who fan but unfortunately left sorely disappointed. On entry, the room looked worn out and you could see signs of quick fixes which diminished quality. Throughout the game, we found puzzles didn’t make much sense or flow to each other, often needing to ask for a clue to point us in the right direction. A couple of puzzles had issues including the final step, which due to being broken meant be failed the room!

Considering it’s a licensed BBC game, I had hoped that the standard of the room quality would’ve at least been kept high but clearly not. Definitely draws people in on the premise and then fails to deliver. 

On a side note, the hosts were both lovely and the venue is nice, just not the room for me!

TV monitor timer broke within a few minutes, GM said they would prompt us/give time checks. They did neither until 10 minutes to go, at which point we had no chance of completing. Such a shame as we then missed out on the big finish

This was, unfortunately, the worst room we've ever done. Previously, I did one of the best ever rooms at Escape Hunt Birmingham, so I don't want to hold it against them. It was a bad day for them, so I'm not going in to details. If it had been my first experience with them, I'd have written them off, but their Fourth Samurai was absolutely brilliant, so we will be doing their other rooms. 

Ultimately, this room is unplayable due to broken tech. There was so much broken, we weren't able to solve a single puzzle without intervention and they had to just let us out in the end. This was a combination of the GM's not setting up the room correctly, poor game design that allows the Players to corrupt the game, and broken tech. It was a horrendous experience and means we certainly won't be doing the Doctor Who themed game over at the NEC. However, we have thoroughly enjoyed every other game at Escape Hunt Birmingham, so with that in mind, it must have something to do with the BBC licensing. This was probably bought in and they don't have the parts to fix it.

Maybe 3.5 stars if you're a Whovian, otherwise a rather average room.