What do airports, paddle boarding, and The Canterbury Tales have in common? Answer: This month’s roundup of escape room news features all three.
Greater London
🔒 Room Lockdown Hornchurch have opened their 18+ ‘adult’ themed room Red Light District.
🔒 Escape London replaced The Cabin at their Shepherd’s Bush branch with The Master’s Cabin – I’m not sure how much content overlap there is, if any.
South East England
🎭 If you haven’t already seen what escape legends The Escapement are doing with The Canterbury Tales Experience, take a look here.
🔒 Puzzlalogical in Bracknell launched their latest, Alien Encounter. It’s a 75 minute room, and the spaceship name ‘USS Ripley’ might give you a hint at the storyline.
🔒 Continuing the space theme, Escape Kent opened Lost In Space, where the peril is a lack of oxygen. They’ve also moved Robot’s Return (which you may have played elsewhere as Coming Home) from their Faversham branch to Prison Island.
🔒 Monkey Mayhem at Pressure Point is a new room built in collaboration with Time 2 Escape, opening next week.
🔒 Escapade in Reading are now running their outdoor On The Run experience again, on selected dates.
🔒 In Slough, Bust Out 360 will open Elevator Terror in mid-June, in which you’re trapped in a lift turned deathtrap.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Southampton: Captain Blackheart’s Curse and U.S.S. Redemption
🔒 Hysteria Escape Rooms (Chatham): Survival
🔒 Mythologic Escape Rooms (Gillingham): Sneaky Santa
🔒 The Attic Romsey: Panic in the Attic
South West England
🔒 Camelot is an Arthurian themed new game from Housetrap, located at their main Bodmin branch.
🔒 The St. Ives branch of Escape Time opened The Butcher; this room was previously available at Trapped Escape Rooms in Gloucester.
🔒 Falmouth’s Eureka Escape is now operating as Kernow Escape, with the same three rooms as before.
🔒 Diamond Vault is the third room at Escape Room HQ in Swindon, open from tomorrow.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Arcadia Escape Rooms Bournemouth: Cadaver, New York Underworld, The Street Artist
🔒 Cornwall’s Great Escape Rooms Newlyn: Platform 9⅝
Wales
From last month’s update:
🔒 Caerphilly Escape Rooms: The Mine
🔒 Locked In North Wales Towyn: Cabin in the Woods
West Midlands
🔒 Escape Quests (no relation to Escape Quest!) is a new company in Ross-on-Wye. Their debut room is Restaurant Rivals, with an unusual culinary theme.
🔒 Hourglass Games (the Worcestershire one) opened a second room, Escape the Pharaoh’s Tomb.
🔒 The Puzzle Room Cannock replaced Emergency Landing with Emergency Landing 2, and also opened submarine room Sub Zero.
East Midlands
🔒 Daventry Miniature Race Cars launch an escape room tomorrow – The Search for the Brookland’s Cup is a museum themed room designed by Horton’s Emporium.
🔒 Everyone’s favourite (?) serial killer is back – Escapologic have opened an all new version of The Butcher.
🔒 At Trapp’d’s Chester House branch the new room is Atticus Alberwick’s School of Sorcery, in which you must save your magic school.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Horton’s Emporium (Northampton): Dead Man’s Chest
🔒 Mission Classified (Grimsby): Puzzle Wall
East of England
🔒 Breaking new ground in the escape industry, or rather new water, paddle board association Go Paddle are running a two hour escape game called Mystery of the River Bure in which you paddle between clues – suggested for those with paddling experience.
🔒 Cluetopia Clacton’s newest is Lockbuster Video, which looks like a lovely piece of nostalgia for those who remember renting VHS movies, open from next week.
🔒 New at Locked In Lynn is The Garden Shed, in which you discover some disturbing secrets in your grandparent’s belongings.
🔒 It’s a good year for dinosaur games – the latest is The Dino Disaster at Angle Escape.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 CryptX (Knapwell): Tarot
🔒 Next Level Escape (Ipswich): Jigsaw’s Lair
North West England
🔒 If you’re flying out of Manchester Airport, you can now play an escape room while you’re waiting for your flight – although only a VR one. Gaming Point have six familiar 45 minute VR escape rooms, and I think are aiming to offer the same at other airports in the future.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Escape Quest (Macclesfield): Titterton’s Toffees
🔒 Cryptic Escape Rooms Manchester: The Scare Floor
🔒 Lock Down Escape Exit Games (Warrington): Slaughter Cabin
Yorkshire & the Humber
🔒 You’ll surely have heard the buzz about The Great Loudini at Escapable; they now offer a puzzles-only version of the room. Personally I’d suggest holding out for the full strength version of the room to get the full experience, but if you can’t get one of the scarce slots, this might be a good alternative.
🔒 The Haunted Hound is a new offering from The Great Escape Game in Sheffield, and appears to be a hybrid of a bar and an escape room – a place to go for a drink, but one where there are puzzles to solve.
🔒 Mission Classified in Grimsby will open in mid June their new cowboy room, Red Rock Canyon.
North East England
🔒 The Escapologist will open their new Gateshead branch in a couple of weeks. They list five games (Chaos in the Cosmos, Incredible Creatures & How To Feed Them, Lost In Time, The Infected and The Vault), plus children’s party versions of the three family-friendly themes.
🔒 Northumberland Escape Rooms in Morpeth opened their third room, train game Murder on the Morpeth Express.
🔒 The Riddle Room Forest Hall is now running The Lab, a room aimed at younger players (specifically, ages 10 to 16).
Scotland
From last month’s update:
🔒 Inveraray Jail: The Debtors of 1850
Northern Ireland
🔒 A new Northern Ireland room: Escapade HQ opened Sub Zero, which I believe is the same design operated by Escape Ipswich and other branches.
Play at home
📹 I normally only list games from UK companies here, but some of the escape venues in south Brazil are effectively shut down due to the recent severe floods, and are running play from home versions of their rooms in the meantime, both live avatar style and play anytime versions. Here’s a list of games that you could play to help them make it through.
Also
🌍 The other day I added the 20,000th game listing to EtR! 🥳 Thank you to everyone who helps me keep the data up to date. The site has increasingly thorough listings for games outside the UK too these days, but if you’ve played something for which there isn’t a listing, you can still add it to your list of games played – go to https://escapethereview.co.uk/review-or-rate-a-game/ and select ‘let me type in the details manually’.