Escape Leicester: Submarine

This was our least favourite escape room at Escape Leicester. Theres plenty of pieces of this room that are good but it simultaneously is too linear for more than one person to do a puzzle at a time, and not linear enough to provide thematic indications of which puzzle is next.

As a team of two we really struggled with the final puzzle in particular.

Good theming, I could really almost believe I was actually in a failing submarine. Annoying that the lighting level was consistently so low in the first (main) section. It made a search and find puzzle extremely difficult! After a while it becomes irritating having to use torches for everything.

There are 2 physical / dexterity tasks early on in the room  - one was very difficult and we basically had to cheat, the other was almost impossible and felt pretty unfair. We only managed it because we happened to have team members with arms that were slim yet long, but it still took ages. If I’d been doing this room in my more usual team of 2, we’d never have managed it.

Apart from that the puzzles were fun and varied.

Good theming. Enjoyable, linear game.  One puzzle that is near impossible and we only completed it by cheating slightly as we put our hands inside when that wasn't how it should've been done. Anyone with larger wrists probably wouldn't be able to cheat it and I couldn't imagine how boring that would be, to actually complete it!

2 players, we felt this game was fairly easy and at times I wondered what on earth a 3rd or 4th team player would even do. However, other reviews state difficult so I suppose it completely depends on how your brains work! 

Only 2 padlocks, rest of puzzles were tech. Wanted more from the game, felt the space it was divided into was quite small and possibly quite boring compared to other rooms played. More attention to detail would make this game better visually, leading to feeling slightly overpriced compared to other games around for cheaper.

Couple times the GM missed us doing things and mags popped late, but the host was very friendly and enthusiastic which always adds to the experience. 

Some fun physical puzzles however, and an overall enjoyable experience bar that one puzzle that others also seem to hate.

There’s some really good ideas in this game.  It a linear progression of puzzles but there is one puzzle in the first half of the game that I feel is desperately unfair and hard to achieve.  It becomes fairly obvious  what you have to do, but achieving it is something else.  We struggled with this so much that the GM eventually overrode the puzzle letting us proceed with the game.  We ultimately failed due to one of the last puzzles being broken (the GM was incredibly apologetic and we had solved the puzzle, we knew what we had to do we just couldn’t’ complete it).  I think that puzzle in the middle is unfair and even though this game is offered to two players, only having two players would increase the difficulty of it by a level of magnitude.  

The theming is strong if the story is a little confused.