by Deadlocked Escape Rooms Reading (website)
122 Castle Hill, Reading RG1 7RG
2-4 players
Languages: EN
🐶
Overall rating
based on ratings from 68 users
combined with 6 pro reviews
Your review
Player reviews
Great game for Dr Who fans!
This is a family friendly escape room as compared to the other one on site. Most original room we’ve seen - the room is constantly changing and surprising you immersing you in the story. You arrive straight into the story no old fashioned instructions it’s all given to you in character- we loved it!
Avoid parking in the car park if you can unless you have a tiny car.
The game had a good concept and a fun to play. The puzzle were solid and we had a good time. There were a few niggles with the equipment and the host has to come in twice to fix things which was a bit of a shame but he handled it well and built it in to the character he was playing.
Unique, family friendly experience with a clever implementation that adds to the immersion. It's also nice to come across an experience that lasts longer than the usual 60 minutes. The location itself is a bit run down but would recommend this as a good, family friendly experience with a nice mix of puzzles.
This was the first of the two rooms we did at Deadlocked Reading, and although it is still a great room and we had fun, I would say it is definitely the weaker of the two. However, with the other room being 18+, this is a great family-friendly room. They had a fantastic use of space, but it sometimes feels cramped (which explains the max 4-player limit).
The lovely mixture of puzzles and the time-machine theme allowed them to mix up the themes beautifully, so it didn't start to feel boring, and the creative use of the space allowed you to keep wondering where you might end up next. The puzzle types matched the themes, and for a sci-fi theme, the tech was all working perfectly and well-maintained, which was a relief. Though the screen-based central system in the sci-fi zone did mean that as a team of 4 there were many moments where we were stood waiting for 1 member to solve the puzzles on the screen.
The main thing that let it down for me would be the budget. You could tell that it was put together on a lower budget and as someone with high attention to detail I struggled to be fully immersed when I could see how it had all been stuck together. The other thing being that the introductory speech was a little dragged out and often unrelated to the game, it started to feel quite awkward when we just wanted to get into the room and get started.
With a little extra TLC this could be a great little room for more novice teams, and is still a fun room for those more experienced. We loved all of the sci-fi easter eggs throughout and had a great time.
We have followed Deadlocked since 2020 when we found their first online game, and we eagerly completed them all in lockdown. We then made a special trip to Loughbrough in 2022 to do their rooms before the venue closed. This was our first visit to Reading. The room had some interesting puzzles and was cleverly laid out in the small space available. Our host was fully in character and very welcoming. Thanks for having us.
Reviews by escape room review sites
Time Machine is definitely the first game I’ve seen that claims a 60 second time limit - but of course there’s more to it than that. The time-warping plot actually has a 90 min limit in total; I won’t spoil details of the 60 second thing, but it’s a smart idea that provides the backbone of a game that is structured as a series of shorter vignettes.
For disclosure purposes I should make clear that the owners of Deadlocked are good friends of mine, and knowing that Time Machine is their pa...
We have just 60 seconds to fix a broken time machine before rifts in time change the world forever. Can we, and our robot helper, succeed?
We took to Escape the Review to find reviews to see which rooms in Reading got good reviews and The Time Machine at Deadlocked Escape Rooms had great reviews. We checked out the website to see what the room was about and it peaked our interest. Its a 90 minute room where you have 60 seconds to fix the time machine otherwise you would be spat out into a random time period each time. The concept sounded pretty original and so we booked as a group of three. We arrived at the building and the confirmation email told us what to do but I was just replying to some messages before our room begun as I didn't want to use my phone inside the building but our host appeared at the door. I'm going to be honest, he was completly different to any games master or host we've had for any escape room we've played before. It was almost as if he was new and unsure of what to do but he was left on his own and he just had to do it. He was quiet and distant and I couldn't quite work out if it was a character or not. We decended down the stair case and at the bottom we were told to put out belongings in a box. He then told us to go in this room and watch a video about the room we would be experiencing. We were told that we would have 60 seconds to fix the time machine but if we failed to fix it in that 60 seconds we would be kicked out into a different time period. The video finished and we were led into the room.
Lists
These are the 100 highest rated escape rooms (out of 1600) in the UK, as of 31st Dec 2021, based on combined ratings from enthusiasts, bloggers and experts - every game here comes highly recommended.
[Last Update: January 2026] I’ve visited the United Kingdom several times and played a total of 173 escape games from 61 different providers. As always, I’ve asked also other enthusiasts and bloggers for their opinions. The final table combines the individual rankings of 63 enthusiasts...