No Exit: El Exorcista

Athens is famous for horror games, and as a horror experience, El Exorcista is my favourite (of those I’ve played so far). If that’s sufficient to make you book it in, then I suggest you don’t read on until after playing it, because not knowing what’s coming can only improve the experience. Although I’ll repeat one useful piece of advice I was given for it: even if terrified, don’t close your eyes, because it would be a terrible shame to miss particular moments.

All three games we played at No Exit featured actor performances. In all three cases the performances were superb and made the games. El Exorcist has perhaps the most physically impressive performance of the three, and while the puzzles were solid the reason to play this is the spectacle and the sheer impossibility of the way the scares come at you.

With some of the other Athens fear games, I found the jump scares started to get repetitive; if it’s not actually scaring you then someone screaming in your face gets tiresome after eight or twelve times. There was an element of that here too: I find fear works better with a longer build-up, and when it’s not dulled by repeated exposure. But El Exorcista is so creative in the ways it catches you off your guard that it remained effective.

Close to the end I felt a particular puzzle sequence weakened the (mostly excellent) pacing, in that it interrupted the build towards the climax; it seemed to me that it’d have worked better at an earlier point in the game. But that didn’t stop the game from finishing strong.

If you definitely don’t want to play horror games then this may not be for you; fortunately there are equally fantastic non-horror alternatives at the same venue. Otherwise, this is one of the games that make Athens such a special place to play escape rooms.