Escape Sheffield: Taken

I worry that the reason this room is considered "difficult" is because of the lack of signposting. There was multiple padlocks of the same type (letters, directions, numbers) with no indication which was which.

 This meant trying the code on multiple padlocks, several of which required more than expected force to open. Some puzzles had very little indication of the starting point of the answer or order of the numbers or letters.

There was one large puzzle to get a key which was really long and unsatisfying. The room was essentially just an office and wasnt immersive at all. 

I think with some padlock changes, increased signposting and a little more ambience, it could be good. There were a few good puzzles, but none were difficult. The final puzzle was a little tricky, which was fun! 

Not the best escape room we have done but we still had fun and the host was great. This is not the best escape room for newbies, a lot of the solutions were poorly communicated and not communicated well, and some of the tech just didn't work properly.

One puzzle was so faffy which took 10 mins and required no brains to solve, only patience. Puzzles like this really leave bad stains on the experience for me

We had fun but there is better one's in Sheffield.

Quite sparse on design but a decent theme, some fun puzzles. Got a problem with some really unnecessary red herrings and an absoute time killer of a puzzle, but it worked my brain and I had fun. Ran it alone.

Having played over 50 rooms, and compared to some of the others at this venue, as a whole this room was incredibly underwhelming. The theming wasn’t great, and the puzzles were often a bit illogical. We spent 10 minutes scouring the room for the code to unlock the first padlock - in the end we had to be given a hint, with the solution making us both a bit irritable as it was sloppy in its design. Some of the other puzzles were fine, but halfway through we came across another that didn’t make sense as it involved ambiguous symbol matching.

Perhaps we’re just fussier than we used to be as we’ve done some truly outstanding rooms, both in theming and with the puzzles involved, but we left the room feeling a bit irritated, and it was one of those we complained about the whole way home.