Escape Reality Leeds: Nosferatu

This was one of our favourite Escape Reality games. It suffers from some of the same problems with clues etc as all of their games, but the puzzles were nice and the story made sense. We ran a little over time but they let us finish as we were right at the end. 

Enjoyed the themeing of this one

Nosferatu (What a Guy)

As part of a birthday weekend, I came to play Nosferatu with a few friends. Our host was okay- our interaction with them was minimal because of Escape Reality’s infamous hint system (more on that later). Their briefing- which included a “If you break anything, you have to pay for it”- wasn’t the friendliest I’ve ever experienced. Did we look heavy-handed, or something? Who knows.

Story

Discover the reason behind your fellow villagers’ mysterious deaths, or fall victim to Nosferatu.

Puzzles

The first puzzle was impossibly difficult without a clue. There were multiple aspects you had to link together: rather than easing us in, the vampire folk clearly wanted to throw their hardest task at us first. Others were manageable and did an acceptable job of tying in to the theme. As ever with Escape Reality, tablets were used for accessing hints by scanning images next to puzzles. Lazy, impractical (it was a dark room) and lame. We needed a couple of pointers, but these “clues” simply tell you what to do.

Mise-en-scene

There were one or two surprises, but Nosferatu maintained an eerie vibe as a pose to a terrifying one…so don’t worry about getting too spooked (I say this as one of my friends is a scaredy-cat). The surroundings were correspondingly gloomy/macabre.

Final Comments

Something was up with the final puzzle, as the action we were meant to perform did not bring about the outcome it should have. After many (many) attempts, though, it worked and we got out with about thirty seconds to spare!

Not scary at any point even though it leads itself to be scary… ridiculous clueing system linked to iPads/tablets and QR codes. I had to brute force a mag lock as the prop was clearly broken. Spent a good 10 minutes trying to get the GM’s attention to try and fix it or enable us to carry on. This was the 2nd room I had played at the venue on the same day. I should have bothered… it’d have saved me some money 

The friends (DnD group) I play rooms with tend to prefer the clue systems used by Escape Reality - we prefer that hints are entirely optional, the iPads aren't particularly immersive but there's options to ask the host for hints - we usually put the tablet down at the start and forget about it. This was the first room we ever did and started off our love for them. 

Theme was pretty straight forward and nice, and the use of props throughout were fun.

We've had great experiences with the hosts at Edinburgh.

As a team of two, there was a good amount to do in here and while it wasn't the most original or spectacular, it was just really good fun! With a bigger team, I don't think it would be too challenging but there were a couple of really decent puzzles. The hosting at Escape Reality Edinburgh is always top notch, which earns an additional half star!