Locked in Edinburgh: The Secret Lab

A fantastic game at a fantastic venue with a fantastic owner.

What more can I say! 

This game didn't quite live up to its reviews for me.  Don't get me wrong, it was still excellent but I was expecting it to be one of the best and it wasn't.

We were kept waiting standing outside for ages before our game started which wasn't the best customer service to kick things off. But things improved once we got inside.  The game has lots of great puzzles but quite a few rely heavily on technology and were a bit of a let down when they didn't quite work properly and left me feeling rather frustrated.

The hint system in this room gets a special thumbs up mention :-).

We had so many high expectations for this room after being voted best in the UK and 13th best in the world. I have no idea how this room could be in anyone's top 10, I didn't find this room enjoyable at all. Before entering the room, our game master told us "oh by the way, this puzzle is broken, but it won't affect your game.". This was enough to put us in a weird mood as we were surprised and disappointed to hear that we won't experience the full room features. The room itself is small, despite them saying it's a massive room, you spend the whole hour feeling cramped due to each puzzle being in small cages. You can't see what people are doing, you can't see the puzzles and, overall, you feel like you've missed so much as everything get solved at the same time. Not sure if it was because it was too many of us in the room as it was 8 of us... But despite that, the story is not immersive and the room, even though it stayed authentical to the vet hospital it used to be, is not immersive, the background audio is inexistent, not helping with that either. So many things in this room seemed a bit DIY and slightly broken. I really didn't enjoy it. We escaped in 30ish minutes without even realising that we escaped. The game master opened the door and just chanted a "Yeah, you've done it!" and faced a group of surprised and disappointed faces in the room showing a "Is that a joke?" frown. Not only that, but she then said "we are planning a puzzle for the exit but it doesn't work" which left another sour taste in our mouths. There is also one puzzle that shouldn't exist as the code you receive is not used at all in the game. Three of us were working on it while the five others completed the last puzzle, resulting in those 3 people to have a complete feeling of unaccomplishment as they haven't seen the ending when the game master entered to congratulate us out of nowhere. Such a disappointment. I don't understand how this is classified as best of the UK by the Top escape-room project as I can list 40 better ones in the UK. It's such a shame as the puzzles are quite smart but we spent 1 hour after the room just listing how much we disliked our time. Such such a disappointment. 🙁

A must play!

Oh my gosh what a fantastic room!! This was one of two games we played at Locked In in Summerhall on the same day (the other being The Cutting Room, which we all liked but unanimously as a group not as much as The Secret Lab) and we had an absolute ball. From meeting our wonderful, enthusiastic and encouraging host, to ending up on the leaderboard, it was just an all-round awesome experience. The setting of this room is really unique, and without giving too much away, the way the team have used it is so original, but always so perfectly logical, that we were just blown away. As a slightly larger team, we found that we could split up (in fact we were forced to, at one point) and all be getting on with things, in the most satisfying way possible. With the layout of the room, even though you might be engaged in something completely different from your other teammates, you still were aware of what else was going on around you, and so didn’t quite feel like you were missing out as is so often the case in non-linear rooms where everyone splits up to divide and conquer. Some incredibly clever and original puzzles really impressed us, and what made it all so perfect was that everything led seamlessly from one set piece to the next. Nothing was out of theme or place, and the clueing system was so cool! We actually wished we had used it more afterwards, just to have seen it in action more! The incredibly attentive hosting meant that the only time we received a clue was where a genuine human error had been made, which was exactly the amount of help we would have wished for (we prefer to try and go it alone if at all possible). Although one silly oversight led to us taking maybe a few extra minutes to escape than we would have liked, overall we were really happy with our play through and felt like the game really was designed to be a satisfying, collaborative experience for a medium-sized team. No frustration here, just absolute breakneck fun from beginning to end! Definitely one of the very best games in Scotland! A must-do!

A difficult room to do as a 2 but we persevered and were successful. Some unusual uses of tech we hadn’t seen before and the clue system was brilliant! 

Crazy puzzle-fest in a very large room. Really good fun, my fave in Edinburgh. Played as a 2 which meant we were busy busy busy! One of the few games where I would say that a team of 4 good players would be fine. 

I remember liking this one, non-linear enough to keep a team of 5 occupied separately with some interesting puzzles and unique ideas. Cool technology as well. The old vet school setting really adds to the ambience!

A lot for our group of 2, but a very rewarding game.

Set in the vetinary college, there are some inventive ways of reusing the original decor and layout of the room. We really enjoyed the decent quantity of puzzles here - logical rooms are always a joy to play and this has logic in spades. A great part of this room is that progress is easy to measure - we felt at ease with the time and free just to focus on our puzzles.

The two of us were quite separate in solving puzzles a lot of the time but it's a divide and conquer kind of room so we expected that. Some strong communication is needed, though!

Great  room. Defeated us!