Escape Hunt Watford: The Fourth Samurai

By | May 4, 2021

by Escape Hunt Watford (website)

Watford

2-6 players

Languages: EN

60 minutes

You are Japanese Samurai warriors. Your honour and your lives are at stake. You have 60 minutes to destroy a mystical sword, or a fate worse than death awaits you.
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Overall rating

Rated 2 out of 5

based on ratings from 57 users
combined with 5 pro reviews

Your review

Player reviews

Ksen experienced rated this:Rated between 20 and 20 out of 5
Played: 2021 Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
originalbroken tech

When played in 2021 the room was badly run down with all lot of the technical puzzles malfunctioning. Puzzles and theme themselves were nice though, so I can imagine it is better at other locations (or here if restored).

liam and rosie experienced rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
MissLoopyLou93 experienced rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 30 Oct 2020 Team size: 2 Time taken: 51:00 Outcome: Successful escape!
beautifulimmersivestory-driven
A beautifully themed room with plenty to do. A lot of unique puzzles throughout. 
Sam Carr experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 31 Outcome: Successful escape!
abooth expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 44 Outcome: Successful escape!

Not bad and it looks nice but there's not a huge amount to do if you're an experienced team.

Mark Greenhalgh expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 24/03/18
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 42 Outcome: Successful escape!
beautifulhi-techoriginalquite easy
Jen Wells (Get Wells Soon) expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
beautifulimmersive

A brilliant start to this game and a great mix of physical challenge, searching and logic. We hammered our way through this one but it never felt too straightforward, just enjoyable.

Anonymous rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 3 Outcome: Successful escape!
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 10 and 10 out of 5
Played: 15 Sep 2021 Team size: 4 Time taken: Under 30 mins Outcome: Successful escape!
broken techdangerousquite easy

Imagine a cell about 4 ft x 8 ft. And there are 6 people in it. Physically barred from the outside, with no emergency release. And the puzzle which you solve to get out of it is broken.

And the GM's running 3 games at the same time.

Welcome to the Fourth Samurai!

There are roughly 10 puzzles in this game, and 6 were broken. Some had been broken since May when they opened (4 months before).

There's no timer in the game, but from looking at our watches before we went in / when we came out, it was well under 30 mins.

The game was pretty, the story thin, there's only 1 physical lock and it mostly relies on the GM to hit a button to trigger things. When they're not looking at the 2 other games. And so, despite doing the "right thing" over and over, nothing happened.

All of the above is a pity, because I could see it as a good, solid game otherwise - although a bit easy for anyone who's not a beginner - if things hadn't been broken, it could have been a 15 min game.

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Reviews by escape room review sites

I'd add a warning that this is a room well suited to playing as a pair, which could work less with with a bigger group - an early puzzle could become a frustrating bottleneck, since it's potentially time consuming and can only be tackled by one person at a time, and the rest is fairly linear. Most enthusiast pairs will also find it an entirely approachable level of difficulty.

Playing the same game on a later occasion and in a different location (Oxford), I found the aesthetics quietly appealin...

A solid game across the board - storyline, decoration, puzzles and finale were all good. If you want something that pushes the boundaries of escape rooms then go elsewhere but if it's enough to just be good throughout then it's a great choice.

I have to admit, The Fourth Samurai wasnโ€™t ever going to be my immediate choice of the Escape Hunt games 

Escape Hunt- The Fourth Samurai

July 2023

Overview 

This was our first visit to Escape Hunt. Escape hunt is well know across Exeter and with a number of rooms to chose from, we decided to give one of their more challenging rooms a try as our first attempt, The Fourth Samurai.  

The location is easy to find in the middle of the city. There is some public parking nearby with a short 5 minute walk to the venue. You enter into a multi sport bar with axe throwing and darts downstairs. We approached the main desk and were escorted upstairs to the games area where we were greeted by our host for the game. 

The briefing area and waiting area is actually quite small and compact for the number of rooms they have available. It is clear that the focus at Escape Hunt is quick turnaround to maximise profit instead of customer experience. Whilst we were receiving our brief in the corridor, two separate parties had to squeeze through us, interrupting the brief and this caused us to lose a little interest into the experience before we had even started. One of us was nominated as group leader where they were the only one who could see when walking in and we were taken into room where we began our mission.

Room impression

The first thing to mention is larger groups will struggle in this room. We are a team of 4 and the beginning of the game was a real struggle for us. Only one of you can really start the game and it left us quite frustrated. Once we had a good look around the room, the background music and decoration did help us immerse us into the game somewhat but when we started going trough the puzzles and getting a closer look at detail, the room was actually quite tired and you could make out where old games had been adapted because of breakage etc. This did let the room down as it did have real promise and I dare say when it was new, it would have been quite an impressive room. 

Puzzles

The first puzzle frustrated us, me in particular a lot. They gave us the option to just skip the puzzle and they would let us move on. This started the room off in a slightly negative tone for us and made us feel like there was no point int he puzzle if we can just move on. The puzzles had a linear approach where it felt as if there was enough for all 4 of us to do. There were a few sticking points that had us scratching our heads. Due to the theme of the room, padlocks were a no show with many combination locks and puzzles taking centre stage. The different areas of the game opened up different aspects of the story which was a nice touch and kept the theme flowing throughout. 

Game Master Clues

There was no timer in the room so we were unsure how long we had during our game and a couple of times where we became stuck, there was a quiet voice that came over the room to point us in the right direction with a screen. There seemed to be a slight delay in some of the โ€˜happeningsโ€™ in the room after we had completed a puzzle so this did suggest to us that our game master was overseeing another room as well. We might be wrong but our previous experience in rooms does lead us to this conclusion. This isnโ€™t the end of the world as long as the room flows properly, this felt a little sluggish at points.

Round Up

We have wanted to try out Escape Hunt for a while after other escape room owners have suggested we give this particle room a try. We would say the room was fun for novices and probably enthusiasts but for proโ€™s it might be a bit too sluggish and not overly challenging. The company is there to obviously make money but the churning over of customers and lack of customer interaction wasnโ€™t really for us and this showed in the hosting. One to try and we would probably come back to try the other rooms as it was a decent room but there are better out there, particularly in Exeter.

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