Kingston Escape Rooms: Rob The Bank

The best escape room we've done so far, made us create an account just to give it 5 stars! Fun interactive elements, an interesting story with a simple, focused objective! Good for people of all ages, need to be able to move about on hands and knees. Nans in jail she got caught! #NanaAintNoSnitch #FreeMyNans2k23

This room did not live up to expectations. At all. TLDR at bottom.

There were several bottlenecks within the room which where rather long and ineffective at immersing us as players into the room.  Not only were there bottlenecks, it was all for the same action. Very frustrating as we could not do anything. At the debrief, I gave our host the opportunity to explain how it wasn't a bottle-neck by suggesting that it maybe could have been how we played the room out, but he was clearly not the person actually running the game so couldn't make any comment on it. This meant that there was little energy in the room, not helped by the fact that we had to stay "quiet" due to the proximity of the security guard. We could, quite clearly, hear the GM(s) talking whilst playing which dropped the level of immersion lower, adding to the fact that it felt like the set dressing was lack-lustre for the potential that the room and story had. 

There was very little signposting towards any of the "puzzles" and answers (calling them puzzles is most certainly a little optimistic, this room HEAVILY relies on read and get information and remember the link. There was one or two things I would have called a proper "puzzle" but even they were only really "do this, get that" style of puzzles, there was no layering/multi-stage puzzles to be seen). To add to this signposting issue, where we had found numbers, there were, in this particular instance, ONLY 4 different combinations which could be found in relation to the order, when taking into account we KNEW there had to be some way to get the order (we did find this later on), but considering there were only a very few number of ways it could be correct, we didn't need the order. 

There was a fun little gimmick, I won't go into any more detail, but it was also used as an opportunity to disrupt our gameplay, both from a time point of view and progress, as well as being a way to add things into the room which were not present before. To us, this felt like they had forgotten to reset things rather than being a gameplay design piece, thus making the experience all the more frustrating. 

The GM running our game, I can make no comment on as we never met them. Instead, we were greeted, briefed and debriefed by someone, who did not introduce himself to us.

We had one torch between three of us which felt unnecessary, considering the backstory is a planned heist. You wouldn't plan a heist and only prep one torch (which to add to matters is locked away at the start)  

The start had some illogical steps which, needless to say, were not great for game flow or getting us into the game. The setting to the start was good, though as a lot of this room could, with a little more thought could be improved many times over. 

TLDR: 

Very nice idea and premise BUT illogical room that lacks any puzzles, as well as having many bottlenecks.

I celebrated my 16th birthday with my friends and this was so far the best escape game I have played so far. It was thrilling,  scary and full on! I would recommend it to anyone who is choosing bit of 'scary' action! My best birthday present!

I can't wait to try the other games. I have attended some already, but this one ticked all of the boxes!!!

Well done Escape Hunt!

Best wishes,  

Martina and Beky

Had one of the best times of our lives here. Sooo funny at times and really immersive. I think you get out what you give, so if you’re stiff and timid then make sure you bring someone ‘silly’ with you! Great GM too. 

The most fun I’ve ever had in an escape room. Definitely go with a fun group or friends! Physical and comedic - great hosts to will never forget this experience - can’t remember any of the puzzles just the experience 

This room was very fun for my child’s birthday I would recommend going.

Great concept, similar to another we have done but this stands out as the first with 'live actors'. Logical, funny story, great balance of when to nudge us compared to leaving us to it. Definitely easier in a small team as there are quite a few points where only 1 person can be actively doing something.

Without giving too much away, this room had us laughing at points but also on edge the whole time. Such a fun experience and only wish I could do it again! Thank you to Charlie our incredible game host, and apologies again for the singing. 

A great experience with an interesting premise! Right from the start we knew this was going to be different from other escape rooms we’d visited! The ending definitely had our hearts racing! Would highly recommend! Charlie was an excellent host as well!

We had a brilliant time.  Totally engrossed in the game and the hour flew by.  Didn’t know what to expect but it was so much fun.  My family ranges from 11 years old to 49 and we all had a great time.  Would recommend this to everyone.  

We had so much fun here! You have to be quite silly and we all got the giggles. The puzzles were challenging and varied and the frantic rush to grab the gold at the end was really exciting. The host was excellent. We had a blast!

So much fun!!! Such an adrenaline rush with this game and I haven’t laughed so much in ages. 100% recommend for anyone and everyone. 

Really great game! Had lot’s of fun! The last 2 minutes was definitely a highlight!! We won with 13 seconds left on the clock! Would recommend!!! Team of 3-4 is perfect

Was told this is a great and funny game, I personally found it rather boring. Great concept but the phone is used way to much and there is a lot of running back and forth. Teenagers are hosts but could tell they didn't care about the players and just wanted the pay which was annoying. Really disappointed with this room 

This is a fun room with some great hosting (our host committed to it!) - I think we managed to stress ourselves out quite a lot and our puzzle solving suffered 😅 it’s worth just getting into the theme and having fun with this one! 

I really enjoyed the game and I loved all the funny and silly little bits that added to the experience of the game. 

This is a very quirky game and it definitely has some interesting concepts.  Its not bad at all but a few things let it down for me which would be easy fixes.  

Waiting in reception at the arrival time mean you hear things/noises from the group before that are finishing off which is a bit of a spoiler.

I did'nt really gel with the room and I think that is because there is only 1 torch and I never had control of that and without it there is'nt that much you can do as its all so dark.  I feel its very limiting on what can be done making everyone stay as a group.  I really think more torches are needed to allow more people to explore and get into the game fully.

Finally, I am not a fan of rooms where you have to act or do the thing you needed to do to get the discount on the food order, sorry but I am not a fan of the role play/acting side of it.

But in general its not a bad room, decent mix of tasks to complete.  Would'nt suggest having more than 4 people at most as I just don't think theres the space or light for anymore to get involved, even as a 3 it felt about the right number.

The great hosting makes this room, this is a room that the more you put into it the funnier it gets.

Difficult to keep a straight face throughout the experience- lots of fun interactivity and all in-keeping with the story. More of an experience heavy room than puzzle heavy but really didn't matter. Our GM Oli was also very lovely 🙂

Enjoyable, and great interaction with the gamemaster! Great large set and definitely lots of fun moments however some of the puzzles felt illogical and there were a few times where all four of us were solving one puzzle as there was nothing else to do. 

What a blast! This was a fun, interactive spin on the bank heist trope, sandwiched with a cracking beginning and end. There's a degree of acting involved but nothing too tricky and nothing that takes away from the impetus of the game. This is an incredibly immersive game and we found ourselves really getting into role. Top marks for enjoyment!

This room was buckets and buckets of fun! Of all the games we had booked in for at Chesterfield, this one was the one we were most nervous for after reading some of the other reviews on here that mentioned the gameplay being a lot more acting than solving puzzles. However, we had an absolute blast in this room. We laughed pretty much the entire hour and the acting segments added to the whole experience rather than detracting from it. We could tell that with some of the acting parts, the GM was trying to slow us down as clearly we were doing rather well for time (the puzzles themselves were relatively easy), but as we were having so much fun and still escaped with a respectable time, we didn't really mind! Super cool beginning to the room and a thrilling end, with a bunch of fun puzzles and exciting moments in the middle. We have done a few 'robbery' rooms before with heists being quite a common room theme, but this one was by far the most impressive, unique and enjoyable.

Such a funny room. Played with two kids who loved the hiding element. The phone element may be hard for people who struggle on the phone but the kids were more than happy to play along

You are a group of bank robbers breaking into a bank that’s owned by a rival criminal gang (so no hard feelings).

There were a lot of strong points to this game. The décor was of good quality, with some nice touches, particularly near the start of the room. The puzzle mechanisms were also kept strongly on theme; some of Chesterfield Escape Rooms’ other games tend to be very padlock heavy, but here much more thought has gone into the mechanisms, and any padlocks fitted within context.

One point to note is that Chesterfield Escape Rooms have a philosophy of including quite a lot of redundant information that plausibly could provide a solution to the clues. Ostensibly this is done to create authenticity. For larger groups, this is unlikely to be a major issue, since by dividing and conquering these can be relatively quickly eliminated. For smaller groups, it can be frustrating!

The thing however that makes this game the most fun is that after a fairly standard start, it becomes very playful. There are a number of interactive elements with the “outside world” which are highly silly and entertaining, and a certain amount of (non-scary) live action complete with some well known theme music which made us laugh. There’s also a nice “extra win” condition that adds a different form of enjoyment. Good for most groups other than very young children.

Fun with the kids. Loved the hiding, even with very few places to go

Funny and tense. I wasn't keen on the significant use of the phone though (I'm autistic and find speaking on the phone very difficult) and the parts where you had to be silly, but luckily my team-mate was happy to take on that role. I was very nervous that my intermittent poor mobility would cause issues with having to be fast but it all manageable. Liked the use of the van as a prop. Thank you.

Inspired interactivity, extremely fun and very amusing - good for both beginners and experts

Liked it a lot again - plenty of opportunities to be silly, some clever puzzles, flows really well. Perhaps a bit too much time spent on the phone where no one else could really do anything.

Very funny game, unique interactions with gm.  Amazing large set too.  However, some  puzzles didn't feel all that logical and a lot of gameplay was spent "acting" rather than doing puzzles.  A nice change from the norm and the set creates a great realistic van to street to bank robbery scene. 

A good game for interaction and different from the usual escape room. It felt like the interaction is a way to lengthen gameplay as ultimately the puzzles/tasks are fairly easy to complete. A fun game and something different. 

Laughed an lot in this room! Be prepared for the hide and seek, accents and funny stories about your goldfish! 

What a special room. The entire experience was so cool as you start in a actual van! The puzzle was so related to the theming and some of it was funny as well. The room is mainly linear