Escape London (Shadwell): Taken

By | March 20, 2019

by Escape London (Shadwell) (website)

412 Commercial Rd, London E1 0LB

East London

2-6 players

60 minutes

closed
Your friend has been missing for days, believed to have been taken by a mysterious serial killer.
With a suspect in mind, the police have yet to come close to capturing the kidnapper. Why? The forensics camera holding all the evidence had vanished. With no leads, they were unable to proceed forward and apprehend the killer.
Taking matters into your own hands, you and your friends have been working hard to track his last whereabouts to an office in an engineering facility.
Is this just a normal office, or have you stumbled across the secret lair of serial killer?
show full description
Thank you for helping keep Escape the Review up to date!
Let us know what needs changing:




If you own or manage this company, you can also claim the listing and update it yourself

Overall rating

Rated between 3 and 4 out of 5

based on ratings from 43 users
combined with 6 pro reviews

Your review

Player reviews

kman expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 02 Mar 2019 Team size: 4 Time taken: 52m 48s Outcome: Successful escape!
Simon (The Overthinkers) expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 3 Jan 2019 Team size: 2 Time taken: 50:39 Outcome: Successful escape!
StaceyF expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 21/01/2019 Outcome: Successful escape!
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 20 and 20 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 61 Outcome: Successful escape!
great hostingillogicalplainvery difficult
First of all, need to say that escape sheffield other 3 rooms are far superior to this one, and every time we have been the hosts have been absolutely amazing and this time was no exception to that.The theme is taken, a serial killer/kidnapping escape roomโ€ฆ. Set in a building managers office???? The room looks like an office and is very plain and uninspired, so if you enjoy heavily themed experiences then this isnโ€™t the room for you.Next the reason why this room is so difficult is that NOTHING is signposted, we found an initial hint that led to a dead end and this was the experience throughout, just frustration after frustration around every turn.  Some necessary items were so hidden that even after being told to look for them it still took a lot of searching to find them. This frustration is compounded by no sense of direction or continuity throughout the room.Moving onto one of the biggest problems, one massive time wasting โ€œpuzzleโ€ that requires no thinking/puzzling whatsoever. Our other major complaint was that some puzzles have no way of telling the direction for the order, (I.e. left to right or right to left?), especially when dealing with long directional padlocks this was extremely unnecessary. I checked with our host afterwards and they confirmed there was no way to tell the correct direction of the sequence, you just had to try both.Overall it was disappointing given how much we enjoyed the other rooms here, if theyโ€™re contemplating replacing a room in future then it 100% should be this one.
Tim Cooper expert rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 40:00 Outcome: Successful escape!
illogicalplain
Ollie C rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Played: 19 Jan 2017 Team size: 5 Time taken: 49 Outcome: Successful escape!
unoriginalquite easy

Great beginners room if you're new to the world of escaping. The room theme is a bit plain and there isn't much story but it has some fun puzzles. Experienced players will breeze through most of the room.

abooth expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 21 Jan 2022 Team size: 1 Time taken: 58 Outcome: Successful escape!

Quite sparse on design but a decent theme, some fun puzzles. Got a problem with some really unnecessary red herrings and an absoute time killer of a puzzle, but it worked my brain and I had fun. Ran it alone.

Mark Greenhalgh expert rated this:Rated between 20 and 20 out of 5
Played: 07/01/16
matt_keds expert rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Played: 24 Dec 2018 Team size: 2 Time taken: 54 Outcome: Successful escape!
great hostingunoriginal

#9

The first room we completed at the fabulous Escapism was ironically the least enjoyable there. The room seemed a little plain and the props a bit dated, but this is only in hindsight - we had fun while we were playing. The theme was pretty generic but itโ€™s still worth a go. If youโ€™re heading to Escapism though, all of their other rooms are really good fun and have more immersive set decoration no storytelling so try those first, especially Radioactive or Legacy.

Sarah281 rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Played: 11 Aug 2021 Team size: 2 Time taken: 53.46 Outcome: Successful escape!

Not what I originally thought the room was going to be, felt the themeing was a bit off par, Good start to the game - couple of red herrings to keep us gripped. Ignoring the themeing the puzzles were pretty straight forward only got stuck a couple of times as not knowing where to go next. Didn't put me off playing another room.  

Showing most recent only - see all ratings & reviews

Reviews by escape room review sites

Plenty of puzzles, a fair number of locks and good but very much IKEA-esque decoration. A perfectly reasonable game but with nothing to get very excited about.

The second game at Escape Ipswich (and also at various other branches of Escape around the country) has you investigating a serial killer, and inevitably you've found yourselves caught and in danger of becoming his next victims. Naturally this killer enjoys toying with his prisoners in the form of leaving them puzzles that they might be able to solve to escape.

Like the other game we played at the venue, there's not a great deal in the way of decor here. Forget dank basements, this serial kille...

One of their first rooms, which shows, could do with a revamp as itโ€™s not up to the same standard as their other games. Click the link to read our review!

See also