Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Acton: Extinct Revisited

In a departure from normal, I played Extinct as part of a family group including two kids (9 and 12) who were more or less new to escape rooms, which meant a rather different dynamic to playing solely with adult enthusiasts. The venue was clearly set up to handle younger players though - there was a horde of kids of a similar age in the lobby when we arrived, who’d just emerged from one of the other games.

Entering through the noisy arcade area and dealing with the waiver wasn’t the most immers...

Houdinis Escape Tenpin Southampton: Extinct

November 2022

Overview 

This was first visit to Houdini’s in Southampton after months of planning and prep and we couldn’t wait. Their reputation did mean that we were all really looking forward to trying their rooms out and it was just a shame that we could only manage 3 rooms on our visit. You are given an iPad to complete your information details and sign waivers. There is a big waiting area with plenty of seating before being taken into the start of the main brief. There is a refreshment area and a sideboard selling a lot of home escape games. We were taken to an old cinema style room with popcorn machine and cinema screen ready to show us our brief. The host was brilliant in going straight into character and because of how well she did, it was difficult to know when our brief ended and the game began, which was great.

Room impression

The second you walk into the room, you know that Extinct is no ordinary room. The set was incredible. It actually feels like you are in Jurassic Park and it blew us away. With some rooms it can take some time to immerse yourself into the theme but this was certainly not the case. Throughout the game, there were twists and turns that had obviously been well thought through and we couldn’t fault the design of this game at all. The lighting is dark enough for you to need torches in parts but the majority of the room is bright enough for the rest of the game. As mentioned, there are plenty of twists and turns, having to climb and crawl in some parts, making this room easily one of the best we have taken on. 

Puzzles

As you can imagine, with so much being put into this room, there was a large variety of puzzles. There was plenty to do and for a team of 4 there was always something for us to do which was nice not having to stand around and wait for some puzzles to be done, which you can sometimes get in some rooms. The puzzles linked in really well with the set of the game and sometimes it felt as if you were simply exploring the environment rather than completing an escape room. There were also nice elements of the game where our brains kicked into gear remembering something that had happened at the beginning of the game. To summarise, the games were truly immersive and quite incredible. There was one slight sour note where one piece of vital equipment failed us towards the end of the game and this almost cost us escaping. This led us to having to use the walkie talkie and break of the immersion of the game to co firm if we were doing it right. 

Game Master Clues

At the start of the experience you have to nominate someone to be the comms operator, being given a walkie talkie to carry with you. Normally when given a walkie talkie it tends not to go with the room you are completing, however, it felt only right that when trying to escape the dinosaur jungle, we had a walkie talkie. We didn’t need many hints at all but when one came through there was a chime on the tv to get our attention. 

Round Up

With this being our first experience with Houdini’s, we have probably set ourselves up to be disappointed with future rooms. If that is the case then it was completely worth it! Extinct was incredible and easily one of the best rooms we have done. It felt more like a movie set than an escape room. This is simply a must do room if you are visiting Southampton.