Lucardo Manchester: The Prison

Virginia House, 5-7 Great Ancoats Street, M4 5AD

2-6 players

60 minutes

You and your team of criminals are due to be checked into the Category A prison facility in Manchester after committing a series of crimes. As hardened criminals you have connections on the inside - they are staging a riot allowing you the opportunity to try and escape. Time will be limited. You will need to use deception, bribery and skill to attempt this escape. Get caught and you will never get to see the outside world again.

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Overall rating

based on ratings from 4 users
combined with 6 pro reviews

Player reviews

Scotus0 experienced says:

Fugitives!

I was excited to try Lucardo's newest room. In our brief, we were advised that there would only be one code to solve, and all the other puzzles would be hands-on...interesting!

Story

As convicted criminals, your fellow inmates are staging a riot, giving you one precious hour to escape. A common storyline, but executed brilliantly. Wait to see how it unfolds during your endeavours!

Puzzles

They were all practical, encouraging us to think like prisoners, utilising whatever tools were at our disposal. We struggled with a couple of them: without locks to work out codes for, sometimes it was tricky to ascertain what to do next. This kept us guessing and thinking creatively, though!

Mise-en-scène

The journey was impressively portrayed as a real prison-break through the equipment, clothing, props and decor. It was delivered like a piece of immersive theatre. Very, very good!

Final Comments

This was a funny, inventive and engaging room. Highly recommended!

Sabrina Dietrich expert rated this:

tom.mortismith says:

Lucardo's Prison is one heck of a game. It's obvious that the team have gone further than the extra mile to create an immersive, unforgettable game.

The immersion starts straight away. Having to put on an orange shirt, you feel very much like a prisoner, over more of an 'observer', just trying to complete puzzles. Next, the cell you start in is bare, again, to make the whole situation realistic.

And finally, ending in the guard's locker room, it's yet again obvious that they make sure this is immersive, primarily through the use of guard lockers, and a gang-sign 'cheat sheet'.

Overall, a very satisfying game, and really wish I could play it again!

Allie Abbott says:

Lucardo never fail to impress. The amount of effort that goes into their rooms is un-rivalled with any other escape rooms I have been to so far. The Prison is our 5th room with Lucardo and again, did not disappoint. This is a great game for people who like to play a role / get really immersed into a game. It involves using/investigating your surroundings more than trying to solve puzzles. We really loved it and came out with our best time yet!!

Reviews by escape room review sites

Prison is one of the timeless escape room themes. It's been done so many times in many different styles that it's very difficult to build a prison game that feels original, doubly so because there's a very limited range of items you can plausibly put in a prison cell, and an obvious set of tropes to draw upon for puzzles. Nonetheless, Lucardo's take on the genre manages to take classic jailbreak ideas and turn them into a satisfyingly physical sequence of puzzles with something of an action-movi...

Lucardo continues to improve, and The Prison probably ranks as the best of the Manchester experiences. I may have had more fun in their University of Magic game because of its theme but, objectively, I think this is a more impressive experience: the puzzles fit the theme, there’s a better-than-average overarching story, and the moments of theatre deliver a coherent game that’s well worth playing.

6 / 10

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A prison break is nothing new theme-wise, but this game was immersive and realistic and on a completely different level to not only to other similarly themed games, but also everything else on offer at Lucardo.