Escape Live Birmingham: Peaky Blinders: Double Cross

Fortunately for Escape Live this wasn't our first game with them, because we may not return otherwise. Unlike Time Machine, Room 13 and even Peaky Blinders: The Raid, we did not enjoy this room. I think the Games Master held a grudge because we were 'late'. She says we had 17min to spare, but it felt like we were only in there 10 minutes. To be honest, we were still waiting for the real game to begin. We say 'late' because when she phoned and asked where I was at 2pm, enquiring with regards to my 'lateness', we replied 'in your office.' You see, Escape Live is split across 2 buildings; the one on Google, and one where half the games were. On arrival at the office, we had to wait whilst staff looked after others Teams, both arriving, leaving and while still monitoring live games. Someone then walked us round and let us in to the other building. The other building is locked to enquiring public, which is why we didn't go immediately there. Then, once in the correct building, we waited for our Games Master to come introduce herself, even taking the time to purchase drinks from their bar - that's how long we waited.

Anyway, once in the room, the GM introduced the story and ran over health and safety. As part of this, she explained if we want a hint to use the phone inside the room to request them. Fine. Not a problem. I love using those old school phones anyway. I was quite looking forward to it. She then left. There's no timer in the room, but we suspect the clock had already started at the booked time of 2pm and not our actual start, which was roughly 2.15. The GM then left, at which point a video plays on the wall from a projector. This didn't work. We had no image whatsoever and spent the enter entry video waving at the CCTV and calling for the GM. We got no response. We had then missed all the audio, as we had assumed the game would be reset due to this technical issue. So, as for story, I can't give you any spoilers. I literally don't know what the scenario was, which is a shame, because unlike a normal Escape Room, this officially licensed Peaky Blinders story is actually all about the story. It's not an "escape" scenario; it's a story. It's a mission. So this was important and highly detrimental to the game as a whole.

We then never, at any point, picked up the phone to ask for clues. Instead, after ignoring our requests for tech support, voluntarily guided us through the entire game. We suspect that for 2 of the 3 games in the first room that she actually manually released the objects before we'd actually solved them. This was highly frustrating. As experienced gamers, we've never experienced anything like this before. It rendered the entire experience completely pointless. I was so annoyed. It has seriously got me questioning whether we will go back, but we've already completed all of Clue HQ, Escape Hunt and Escape Brum. It's just not worth playing if your GM is going to walk you through it over a speaker, not even the phone, so it's not like you can hang up and ignore her. Rubbing salt in the wound, she then came in at the end and proclaimed how fast we were, with 17 minutes to spare. We suspect that was more like 37 minutes spare, had the timer started when the game did. And if we had so much time to spare, why was she helping us? Totally pointless. Really annoyed about it. 

The game itself isn't great. It's linear with only about 4 actual puzzles and other 'put this here challenges. It wasn't great. And as I said, I think the GM was manually releasing items, so Escape Live just isn't as technically advanced as other places were played. The rooms aren't very atmospheric and we really missed the thrill of the live action we got in The Raid. 

On informing the GM of the technical issues with the video and other complaints with the game, there was no offer of a future discount or anything else to entice us back, which was disappointing, especially given I'd already enquired with regards to booking a large party with them, utilising their back room, but that certainly won't be happening now. It was actually this weekend. We went to Escape Reality down the street instead.

One final note - and SPOILER ALERT - it was very odd to include a sniffing based puzzle, during a global pandemic, when guests may wish to wear a mask to avoid Covid, or may have had their sense of smell effected by a prior Covid infection. To be honest, I think the whole room needs a serious rethink. 

Deffo not worth £90; would have been more enjoyable if we were Peaky Blinders fans I think.

Part of the ‘set’ in the room had a padlock on which was nothing to do with the game, but wasn’t marked as such - we spent a while trying to use the set to see if it was part of the game or find a key for the lock - the host even said people spend time trying to find a key to the lock, so it seems strange they wouldn’t put a ‘do not touch’ sticker on or tell people that it’s not part of the game prior to entering. 

Feels like there were very few puzzles to solve, but they were quite varied, if easy - a lot of mag locks though. 

Crazy that this should be £75. It's got about seven puzzles in total and they're mostly all far too easy. SPOILER:

 one's a smell puzzle which I absolutely hate.