helscape

A fun room with one physical puzzle in particular being something we’ve never come across before and really enjoyed. But the rest of the puzzles became quite predictable, especially if you’ve played other rooms from this company previously.  Several chambers to work through. The theming started off really well but lacked a bit in the final ‘main’ chambers.

Another brilliant room from Escape Key. The theming for this room is fantastic and the attention to detail phenomenal. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble sourcing convincing props for a Cold War bunker, and they are all well integrated into the room’s puzzles. No red herrings. Some great tech and it all worked perfectly. The pacing was spot-on and we escaped with just a few minutes to spare. 

This is a fun, original room. Much like curio, the other room that we have played here, the vibe is rather gritty and dilapidated but that totally suits the theme. It’s a nice balance of spooky and atmospheric without being overly scary.

Howitz contains one of the most fun and exciting puzzles we’ve ever experienced in a room. It’s just a slight shame that only one member of the party gets to fully experience it. Otherwise, the puzzles were fun but quite straightforward - we don’t normally finish rooms with 25mins to spare and would have liked a bit more of a challenge ideally. I wouldn’t recommend this room for larger groups, as I don’t see how there would be enough for everyone to do. And if I’m being very picky, the ending was slightly anticlimactic. But nevertheless we really enjoyed ourselves this room is definitely worth checking out.

This room is lots of fun. Beautifully designed, the puzzles are varied and satisfying. Fair bit of tech and it was all working perfectly. Hosting was spot on. Only tiny negative was a red herring element that we wasted a fair bit of time on. This was our first room at this venue, can’t wait to return and try out the others!

I liked the story and the premise of this room, but the puzzles were just a bit too simple, so we never had any satisfying ‘eureka’ moments when we worked something out. Felt more like just working through a jobs list. Some significant broken tech towards the end broke the immersion and delayed us a good 5-10minutes, but even so our team of two managed to complete the main quest in just 35 mins (and we are far from experts!)

There were then bonus tasks to complete in collecting more loot but as this didn’t count for anything it all felt a bit pointless and anticlimactic.

Incredible room. Space themed rooms aren’t usually my thing but the theming and design for this one is unmissable. Loads to do and the puzzles were fun and inventive. Lots of fun surprises to discover as you work your way through the room. Only negative was that an item we needed to complete a (fiendish) search and find element hadn’t been replaced in the room. Luckily we managed to find a work-around so it didn’t ruin our game, but did cost us a bit of time.

One of the best at-home escape rooms we’ve played and a lovey change from the purely paper-based ones we usually do. The box and its contents are all super quality and gorgeous. I assume they have addressed the production issues reported by earlier reviewers because our box was perfect. Great mix of puzzles, all well themed and fair, and just the right level of challenge for us (I can imagine some more hardcore puzzlers might find it a bit on the easy side)

My 7 year old loved this, perfect difficulty for him to complete on his own without much input from me. Might be a bit easy for much older children.

My 7 year old loved this

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.

A hi-tech, well constructed room split into 3 chambers. I loved the first section themed as a 50s American diner. Good puzzles, albeit nothing groundbreaking. The second section contained just a single, physical puzzle which was fun but over in 5mins. The final chamber I didn’t enjoy - it was heavily screen based and some of the puzzles amounted to playing basic computer games which I can do any time at home and isn’t a very good team activity.

Another element I wasn’t keen on was the regular intrusion of cutscenes on the TV screens. This was an attempt to keep the story going but it wasn’t necessary and the hammy acting just made me feel impatient to get back to the puzzles.

First impressions of this room is that it’s looking rather shabby. This partly fits in with the theme of it being an eccentric collectors house, but it is getting a bit tired and well used in places. Still it was well themed and someone has gone to a lot of trouble sourcing all of the period furniture and ‘curios’. Everything had a purpose and there were no red herrings. And I loved the clue delivery system. Very in-keeping. It’s also worth mentioning that the ceiling is very low - my teammate is 6ft 1in and he only looked a couple of inches off it, I reckon anyone very tall would have to spend the hour crouched over which sounds pretty uncomfortable!

The puzzles were clever and no padlocks in sight. It was a linear game - I’ve read reviews for this room suggesting it would be a challenge for smaller teams but I completely disagree, it was a great room for our team of 2 and I think for larger teams there wouldn’t be enough for everyone to do.

Often there was a bit of a lag with the ‘cause and effect’ element of the room and thus we were sometimes left a bit confused as to whether we had correctly solved a puzzle or what we were supposed to be doing next. Also a slight shame that it’s next door to a horror room and we could hear screaming periodically. It wasn’t too loud though.

But overall a great room that I would recommend.

This is such a fun room. To begin with you are in a very tight space and I can imagine it must feel quite claustrophobic for larger groups at this point, but it soon opens out into quite a large area and the puzzles are fairly non-linear. The theming is eclectic and the storyline bonkers. There’s so much detail to investigate and everything is perfectly designed and constructed, with no red herrings. The puzzles are innovative, logical and varied, the pacing good, and the final conclusion was exciting and satisfying. I’ve only knocked off half a star because it slightly lacked that sense of exploration and surprise that can be found with multiple-chamber rooms.

The theming of this room - diagon alley style - was ok but could have been better executed. Things like using brick pattern wallpaper instead of brick slips or tiles made it feel a bit cheap and basic. Technically the room was split into two chambers - the premise was that you had to break into a shop - but as the shop front was entirely glass, there was no fun reveal for the second section as everything was visible from the start. I did think the clue delivery system was great though and very fitting with the theme. A final slight annoyance was that screams could periodically be heard from the next-door horror room, along with other general comings and goings.

The room was fairly plain and there wasn’t much to explore that was puzzle-related, however there was a large amount clutter and some red herrings. It’s a low-tech room that relies mainly on padlocks. Much of what little tech there was seemed to be broken, and we required instruction from the GM on how to manipulate a piece of tech in order to get it to work. Most of the puzzles were based on observation. In the second chamber this presented a problem as some of the puzzles required us to spot things and identify colours in very dim lighting that were extremely difficult to see.

This is where the hosting let us down a bit. The GM mentioned at the start that she would be able to see us but not hear us. I don’t know how usual this is, but I did wonder if it had an impact - clues given were generally not quite pertinent to the thing we were working on at the time. A simple ‘look up’ at the point where we got really stuck would have helped enormously.

This is a single-chamber room, reasonably well-themed as a ship’s cabin, but not overly exciting. There is no tech at all, it’s all padlocks, and some of them were tricky to operate leaving us unsure if we’d got the right code or not. The puzzles fitted the theme of the room well, but some were rather frustrating - admittedly we were at the time a very inexperienced team. Great history.

Loved this room. The theming was spot-on. There were 3 chambers and all were very different and fun to explore. Good mix of puzzles. Fairly non-linear and spacious so good for larger groups. Great hosting. I’ve taken off half a star because some of the tech could do with a slight tune-up, nothing major just some of the connectors needed an extra pull or push to work. 

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.