by Escape Hunt Norwich (website)
Intu Chapelfield, St Stephens St, NR1 3SH
2-6 players
Languages: EN
60 minutes
Step on board a doomed spaceship, where a rogue Dalek has tapped into the power system, in an attempt to recharge its weapons. Should the Doctor’s most feared enemy be successful, it will exterminate all in its path.
You the Doctor’s friends, must prevent this catastrophe. Shutting down the ship’s power core will ensure the Dalek cannot activate its weapons. However, the ship’s life support systems rely on the same energy source, meaning that shutting down the power would result in the death of all 10,000 passengers.
You have just 60 minutes to find a way out of this impossible situation. You must defeat the Dalek to allow the spaceship to continue safely on its journey. Take too long and your destination will be extermination!
Overall rating
based on ratings from 25 users
Your review
Player reviews
Yes it’s really good to have the theme and video in the room. One other very nice design in the room. But puzzles are not logical and lots of prompts needed. Some puzzles a bit wonky. Found it hard to follow the storyline references. And expensive. Avoid.
Played this game for my Dr Who-obsessed youngest son's birthday, and the only good thing I can say is that at least he had a good time. And, if you like Daleks, you *might* too. But not if you like escape rooms.
Almost all the puzzles are fundamentally broken - in one puzzle, the GM had to repeatedly ask *us* over the monitor system whether *we* had inserted the tubes in the correct order - as if they were asking us for a hint whether to press the button to activate the next section of the game or not. There are objects with designs that match other elements in the room, but apparently are only for "decorative effect". There are other elements of puzzles that apparently are only relevant if you play with a certain number of players, but they don't deactivate them if your team is of a different size, so there's no way to know whether they're used or not. Another puzzle has you "interacting" with an A.I. by literally asking it a series of about 20 arbitrary yes/no questions (waiting for about 5 seconds after each one to get a response). What a waste of an hour.
Half the puzzles didnt work and were out of action, effectively written out of the game, there was zero chance you woudl complete this without practically being talked through it by the game master. It was horrendous. So bad that as soon as we walked out, we booked another room somewhere else in Reading. Couldn't leave on such a downer
50% timewaster puzzles
20% waiting for the GM to respond
20% repeating solutions because they didn't register
9% easy logic puzzles
1% being told to mind your attitude'
Only went as I received a gift voucher from my class, 2 adults ended up frustrated, 2 kids ended up bored as nothing for them to do. Several elements not even used though they appeared as we progressed! Avoid this room and Escape Hunt in general, there are much much better games!
Nice looking set, fun technology and enjoyable puzzles. Enjoyed hearing the real doctor (Jodie) guide us throughout. Definitely an easy game but was still fun.
The majority of the puzzles were broken, all too high tech and they just didn’t work and were easy to figure out, not very clever.The Dalek was cool but once you’ve seen it the novelty wears off.
Just so, so terrible. I wish I'd carefully read all the other reviews before playing. Several puzzles were broken but even if they hadn't been, the room is mostly guesswork and not actual puzzles. Huge disappointment and waste of time.
Took My daughter (big Doctor who fan) to the Dalek Escape room. We have done 4 other escape rooms in the past, this was the worst one we have done. It is the smallest also with just one small room.
Some of the puzzles were broken and some had not been set up properly from the last game so some puzzles had to be skipped (that we know off). lots of things in the room not used, maybe part of the game that had to be skipped? Panels on the floor, cupboard with keys in, plant lab broken, power board buttons broken. extension cable visible to Dalek. Very disappointing. very run down.
I've read through the bad reviews of this room and can only say I guess different things appeal to different people.
We booked this one not expecting a huge amount, we're big Doctor Who fans, but found 'Worlds Collide' in Leeds to be one of the least enjoyable rooms we've ever done. (They were charging significantly more than an average room when it first opened, and it was just a pretty standard set-up with a couple of Doctor Who props thrown in. We expected more)
This one was very small, but the decor and soundtrack really helped to set the scene and keep the story going. They've made it quite high-intensity by having occasional moments where you have to stop what you're doing due to a 'threat', so it keeps the adrenaline up.
Others have said some puzzles didn't make sense, we didn't find this to be the case. We only needed one or two hints throughout, and managed to work out the answers to the majority of puzzles from the information given. Some are logic based, some are more physical. If you can't work something out, just re-read the information, it's all there.
The major let-down is the upkeep, it does need a bit of an overhaul. When we went a piece of one puzzle was missing (presumed stolen), and others looked like they needed some general repairs. New gloves would be good, and securing some of the floor pieces, as I tripped over some floor tiles. (It appeared that the floor tiles might be part of a puzzle, but they weren't so could just be glued down properly)
I think because we weren't expecting much we enjoyed it more, but it's a nice little game for a couple. I agree it wouldn't be suitable for bigger groups, but 2-3 is perfect.
Some clever ideas underlie the puzzles but the room is let down by tech issues and lack of maintenance. Made almost bearable by Nathan's GMing.
I'm going to address everything obliquely but you may consider some of this review to be spoilers. Proceed with caution. Especially when you get to the puzzles section.
Theme
This could have been a good generic sci-fi "save the colony ship" theme. The Doctor Who elements are largely superfluous but generally done quite well. They do feel a bit scattered with pre-recorded announcements Jodie Whittaker combined with a Steven Moffat era prop and a Russell T Davies element. There's also a good bit of flavour on a collection of test tubes which name checks a lot of Doctor Who elements. Unsurprisingly there was a Dalek in the corner, which was nice, but not very interactive.
Set Dressing
A lovely, thematic design, but it needs maintenance. A panel was falling off the wall. Everything seemed a bit tatty.
Parallelisation
This room is really bad about having multiple things to do. Most tasks need one or two people to achieve them, and most have enough space for a third person to offer advice but they are sometimes a spare wheel. Don't take four or more people into this room.
Puzzles
All the puzzles were clever ideas let down by implementation problems.
"Find the pieces and put them into the spaces provided" was the only one that was more or less flawless, but also the least interesting.
"Insert the shapes into the slots with only an indirect view" was almost there, but made annoying by the shapes being quite similar.
"Match the objects to the outline diagrams and then select a subset of them using the rules given" suffered from the rules being pretty unclear and it being hard to match the objects to the diagrams. We ended up brute forcing the last half of this one.
"Select a subset of a different set of objects using yes/no questions" suffered a bit from the diagram of some shapes being unclear (this problem went away when we hit our first "yes" question and got a clear colour change). It also suffered from being dependant on a microphone link to the GM so sometimes there was a delay during which we weren't sure if we hadn't been heard or the GM was trying to work out the correct response. I can't think of a better way to implement that puzzle and it was a good idea.
"Arrange the things so something can flow from A to B" is a fairly standard puzzle. The only thing that made this hard was that it wasn't obvious where A and B where. The GM had to tell us!
"Connect the right things by touching magnets to two points" was, again, a brilliant concept, but the gloves with the magnets in were very tatty (I did not want to put them on and ended up just holding them around the magnets) and the sensors for the magnets were unreliable. We lost quite a bit of time hitting the right markers on the panel to no effect.
"Navigate the ship to safety" was another good idea, it was very on theme. The first flaw were that there was a barrier to getting started that we found very hard to locate, and when we did we lacked a physical skill that would make it easy to get over. We only managed that because of player knowledge of RTD era Doctor Who. The other flaw was that the map was a bit too busy and some spaces we needed to pass through were a bit ambiguous about actually being passable.
Finally, there was a "insert things into slots" puzzle that some things just didn't go into properly.
Conclusion
This room isn't worth your time. It's a nice design, but coming to the end of its life, and most of the difficulty comes from things not working properly.
Games master was good but this escape room was awful from start to finish. Seriously terrible.
No logic behind any of the puzzles, half the theming was broken with switches coming off the walls and even part of the wall felt like it was about to fall over.
One of the puzzles literally has you asking the AI computer the same question 20 times before it says "yes".
Without doubt the worst escape room I've ever played and it's honestly put me off every trying another game at Escape Hunt.
Room is designed as a single player set up due to the way the puzzles complete. The puzzles themselves aren't puzzles, they are random objects and images with no logical way to solve as there is no linkage. Reliant on the game master. Needs a rethink.
See also
- Escape Hunt Reading: A Dalek Awakens (Reading)
- Escape Hunt Birmingham: A Dalek Awakens (Birmingham)
- Escape Hunt Cheltenham: A Dalek Awakens (Cheltenham)
- Escape Hunt Basingstoke: A Dalek Awakens (Basingstoke)
- Escape Hunt London Oxford Street: A Dalek Awakens (Central London)
- Escape Hunt Oxford: A Dalek Awakens (Oxford)