Red House Mysteries Torquay: The Strange Disappearance of Arthur Moon

Arthur Moon is a 'perfectly normal' schoolboy whose mysterious disappearance forms the plot of Red House Mysteries' newest game, and the first at their newly opened Torquay branch. If from the name and website description you've gathered that it's set in the 80s but with some unspecified reality-bending twist, then your expectations are on the right lines.

On first visiting Red House's Exeter branch I was impressed by the efforts they'd taken to establish an atmosphere and house style right fro...

Red House Mysteries Torquay- The Strange Disappearance of Arthur Moon

Overview

This was our second visit to Red House in Torquay after really enjoying the previous visit here on the last train the Paris. There is a multi story card park very close by in the centre of Torquay which is about a 2 minute walk to the escape room. You enter a small lobby where you have to wait until the GM is ready for you and then you are taken to a very large reception area for the briefing. The room itself is based on an 80’s boy’s bedroom and a popular Netflix programme with an upside down world. The room itself is designed well enough but for us it was missing the wow factor and could have been done a lot better. None the less, the room was designed well and everything worked as it should. The game seemed a little quiet, when we were thinking and working puzzles out, there wasn’t much atmosphere within the room. The clues and puzzles seemed to flow well but one thing of note, if you are a team of big numbers, you might struggle in the game. We were a team of 4 and we thought that was plenty for the space available.

Room impression

As mentioned above, the first impression of the room was decent. It was based on a 80’s bedroom and aesthetically there wasn’t anything wrong it at all. When the game opened up, lighting might have been a problem but we all managed to see ok. Everything worked as it should and all the decorations enhanced the experience of the room and made you feel like you were going back in time. Nothing was broken and nothing looked tired so on that point, we were more than satisfied. 

Puzzles

The game flowed very nicely for us. We enjoyed the mixture of padlocked games and games themed on a children’s bedroom. The two areas of the game mixed in well together as you progressed through. We didn’t really struggle on any aspect of this game and we didn’t feel ourselves needing that much input from the GM. Even though we got through the puzzles and escaped, we don’t really know how we solved it and how Arthur came back to us. The clues all added up nicely and we didn’t end up skipping anything by mistake which can sometimes happen but not in this game for us. 

Game Master Clues

The game master gave us a walkie talkie but there was no way in which she gave us a hint/clue without us asking for one which was slightly frustrating but this does seem to happen more and more now. The GM was really helpful when needed, which wasn’t often at all but have a GM run reception and multiple rooms does mean that they can sometimes become distracted and this isn’t any fault of theirs. However, this did not effect our experience of this game on the day. 

Round Up

We all agreed that we did enjoy this game and obviously escaping always helps. We enjoyed the theme and this the second missing children’s mystery room that we have done and it did not disappoint. We got into the theme straight away and the added twist of the second part of the game made it really interesting and we definitely had to work well together to escape. We have recently learned that Red House is closing in Torquay and this is a huge shame to the local area as both games here were really good fun. If you get the chance to go before it closes, make sure you go!!