Roomsmiths Escape Rooms: The Naked Eye

Having narrowly missed the chance to visit Roomsmiths on my last visit to Devon two years earlier, and having heard good things about it in the meantime, I made a point of including it on our schedule this time round. Located in the slightly rundown area around Union St. Roomsmiths is one of those venues that you may have difficulty finding - unless, of course, you actually read the instructions in the confirmation mail. Naturally we hadn't, and ended up wandering back and forth past tyre shops ...

Roomsmiths- The Naked Eye

December 2023

Overview 

We were advised by another local escape room to try out Roomsmiths and it didn’t disappoint. The place is actually quite easy to find, it’s above a car tyre garage, with plenty of parking and you just have to go up a flight of stairs. There doesn’t appear to be any other way of getting upstairs so if mobility is an issue, then you may need to ask before visiting. Joshua met us upstairs and took us to a huge reception area to give us a health and safety brief and to talk through the different locks we would find. We were then led into the room to start the game, without a brief which did feel a little strange?

Room impression

We started off in an old style office which was modestly decorating but as the game evolved the rooms certainly did as well. It does get quite dark in places and whilst we did get a torch, we were a team of 4 and we struggled a little for light at times. We did though manage to work through this as some of our eyesights are better than others in the group but it’s something to be mindful of. There is music playing throughout and some comical speeches thrown in from time to time. 

Puzzles

There were plenty of padlocks in this game and although we needed a couple of nudges, on the whole, we really enjoyed this game and we flew threw the majority of it. We really cam unstuck around the mid point and we wasted around 15 minutes on one puzzle, if we hadn’t of overcomplicated 2 puzzles in particular, we would have had a much time than 12 seconds to spare! The puzzles flowed nicely and we didn’t have to run around like headless chickens trying every code in every padlock.

Game Master Clues

There is a generic clock when you walk in with the current time so you can keep a rough eye on your progress. For any hints, Joshua gave us a walkie talkie and was there when we did need him on the couple of occasions. He was very good and on the first time we asked for a nudge, he said no and for us to carry on. We’ve not had this before and we actually quite enjoyed it as we were playing around the correct answer for quite some time and it was nice to see that he was keeping a close eye on us.

Round Up

With a success rate of 35%, we were expecting quite a challenging room, which we had. As mentioned, if we hadn’t of messed about on a coupe of puzzles, we would have had a very good time. Having so little time left meant we really did have to pull it together towards the end and we aren’t really that sure how we got out in time, even the host was impressed! All in all, it was an enjoyable experience and we can’t wait to try the new room coming in 2024.