Escape Newcastle: Taken

Fun but formulaic game. Played with teens who enjoyed it. Experience was sadly let down by a lack lustre host. 

First of all, need to say that escape sheffield other 3 rooms are far superior to this one, and every time we have been the hosts have been absolutely amazing and this time was no exception to that.The theme is taken, a serial killer/kidnapping escape room…. Set in a building managers office???? The room looks like an office and is very plain and uninspired, so if you enjoy heavily themed experiences then this isn’t the room for you.Next the reason why this room is so difficult is that NOTHING is signposted, we found an initial hint that led to a dead end and this was the experience throughout, just frustration after frustration around every turn.  Some necessary items were so hidden that even after being told to look for them it still took a lot of searching to find them. This frustration is compounded by no sense of direction or continuity throughout the room.Moving onto one of the biggest problems, one massive time wasting “puzzle” that requires no thinking/puzzling whatsoever. Our other major complaint was that some puzzles have no way of telling the direction for the order, (I.e. left to right or right to left?), especially when dealing with long directional padlocks this was extremely unnecessary. I checked with our host afterwards and they confirmed there was no way to tell the correct direction of the sequence, you just had to try both.Overall it was disappointing given how much we enjoyed the other rooms here, if they’re contemplating replacing a room in future then it 100% should be this one.

I really enjoyed this room, there was one puzzle that took us ages but we were laughing so hard that keeping getting it wrong just made us laugh harder. Really good fun! 

Like Taken Candy From a Baby

Since I was making an on-the-day booking for a team of 2, I chose Taken.

Story

Rescue your kidnapped friend(s) and escape the hostage situation.

Puzzles

On-theme, but incredibly easy. A bit of searching here, a bit of thinking there.

Mise en scene

A straightforward but immersive enough space that did the job of looking like a kidnappers’ hideout.

Final Comments

It would work fine as a beginner room. I should have been braver and booked us a 4/5-star challenge: we received 2 clues and escaped with 25:26 left on the clock.