Escape Leicester: The Magic Castle

The idea is decent (well, as decent as a Harry Potter rip-off can be), but this was probably one of the bottom 2–3 games I've played in 150+. The actual puzzles are extremely simple; to make this a 60-minute room rather than a 16-minute room, everything is obfuscated.

In the first room, there are red herrings everywhere for the first puzzle. The second puzzle was broken, the third made no sense from the clue so we brute-forced it, the fourth was difficult to see because it was so dark, and so on.

Puzzles in both halves, but mainly the second, relied on long, tedious, repeating recorded loops to solve. To make matters worse, these were played alongside background music and the bangs and screams from the horror room next door. The diction was awful, with unclear/slurred speech and effects making much of it inaudible. One puzzle also required you to know the names of fairly esoteric objects, with zero signposting as to what those names were.

After about 35 minutes, I was so bored that I just sat down and stopped playing. My partner gave up soon after, and we walked out. We were told there was only one puzzle left (which had already started its tedious audio loop), but by that point we were so bored and frustrated that neither of us wanted to spend another minute in the room.

On top of that, there was a story which made absolutely no sense. It was like a fever dream made up of random segments from the Harry Potter films, kind of, with bits changed to avoid infringing on the IP.

There are no mics in the room, so the GMs (multiple people ran the room, and other rooms as well, I believe) couldn't hear us. We had to wave in front of the cameras for clues, which we did more than in any other room we've played. We ended up having to get the GM to read out every audio reel because they were so unintelligible.

Putting the audio into clear, understandable English would massively improve this room. A couple of puzzles were also broken. One involved pressing things in a sequence, but one of the switches was stuck, so it took us 5–6 attempts to input the correct sequence. Another, we were told afterwards, "required millimetre precision" to line up five items, even though there was no way to know where that precise position was. We spent a good 7–8 minutes on that one, getting the solution right immediately but then having to coax the magnets into exactly the right place.

That seems to be the theme of the room: the puzzles themselves aren't difficult; they're made difficult by poor signposting, obscured information, technical problems and unnecessarily frustrating execution.

We enjoyed the theming and immersion of this room. It was split into 2 chambers - the first was really fun and beautiful. The second was somewhat bland by comparison but still very well put together. It’s one of the newer rooms at this venue and it shows as everything seems to be in very good condition. One small gripe is that this room appeared to be located next door to the horror room, and we periodically heard loud bangs and screaming which was distracting.

It was high tech - not a padlock in sight - and all the tech worked well. Some of the puzzles were quite innovative and had us really scratching our heads, although the final puzzle was a bit of an anticlimax as I thought it relatively mundane. We could have done with better signposting at times as it was occasionally unclear when we had completed a puzzle and it was time to move onto the next task. The puzzles were very linear so an ideal room for smaller teams. 

The room was very audio focused - all of the clues and instructions were voice recordings. This could have been good from an immersion perspective but turned out to be a practical issue - the recordings were often unclear and/or combined with a music background and were frankly difficult to understand. We needed to hear the recordings several times to get the gist of them or the GM ended up having to translate them for us over the radio which obviously ruined the immersion for us. I think this room would be improved by re-recording all the audio clues to make them clearer and/or including some written clues alongside.

The hosting could have been better. For a start, we had at least 3 different GMs - different ones taking us in, giving us clues and debriefing at the end. Clues that were given during the game were pretty blunt - just telling us the answer rather than giving us a hint. We were also given answers at times when we really didn’t need them - when we were on the verge of solving a puzzle.

This was the best game we played at the venue.  It’s very much inspired by some wizard school you might have heard of.  There are no padlocks in the game and everything is handled via electronics.  The puzzles are mostly linear but there’s a nice flow to it and we moved our way through the game.  There’s some clever puzzles and as I said the progression is mostly linear moving from one puzzle to the next.  The story is one you’ve heard before but the theming is mostly on point with some clever ideas and a couple I’d not seen before.

Good hosting from a passionate GM. She didn't tell us anything about the 'mission' for the game, so we were told the health and safety and then put straight into the room. After quite a delay, a recording plays over the tannoy which explained more about the goal of the room, however it was so delayed we were genuinely confused about whether to start or not.

No padlocks in this game which is something we like, but we felt the puzzles were a bit same-y throughout the room. We had to use/do the same thing for almost every puzzle, so it would've been a bit nicer if there was some variation. 

Because of the high-tech aspect, we felt as though we were held back a little when we placed certain objects in the correct places but because certain magnets weren't 100% aligned we had to restart/keep moving it around, so it would be good if the GM was able to override things like this to make the game flow better.

The decorations in this game are really well done, from the walls to the props, its all really well made. We loved the final puzzle - it was very clever, although still too similar to the other puzzles in the game. 

The flow of the game would be better/clearer to teams if there was more signposting, as we felt some things randomly popped open, even when a puzzle was half complete - I wonder again if this is because of the tech things 'completing' at the wrong time? Or when told we had done it correctly over radio, it still took a while to actually work/open. 

Also be mindful this game is right next to their scary room, with little to no soundproofing, this can be quite distracting and take away the immersive feel, as we could hear most things the other team were saying. 

Overall a good room, with a great GM who gave us hints at the right time and was really enthusiastic, however maybe slightly overpriced (32pp) and felt like there could've been more puzzle variation.