Lincoln, Jul 2024
FEAR has a reputation, having won the players’ choice vote for scariest escape room in the UK. You could characterise Project Mayhem’s three games as ‘fun and fear’ (Jangles), ‘puzzles and fear’ (Mary), and ‘fear and fear’ (FEAR). Which isn’t to overhype the scare factor of the game; rather, the point of the room is to be a fear experience, not puzzle solving.
The story has you trapped inside a serial killer’s house, and you need to not only escape but also collect four pieces of evidence along the way. Helping you is a friend on the outside, via walkie talkie. The friend is really quite helpful, much more so than I’d be okay with in a normal escape room – to a significant degree you can expect to be walked through what you need to do. I don’t know how much that’s a deliberate design choice and how much it’s evolved by necessity, so as to get nervous teams pointed in the right direction through what’s often a large dimly lit space.
There is of course an actor, and you need to hide from him. There’s normally some degree of advance warning when he might be coming, and for that reason FEAR is less likely to make you jump than Project Mayhem’s other rooms; the style here is more about the dread of the bad guy getting closer, not knowing whether you’re safe or not. And of course the macabre design with sometimes quite gory touches goes a long way in immersing you in the killer’s nasty world.
Is FEAR genuinely the scariest escape room in the UK? I don’t think there’s an objective answer to that; everyone reacts differently to different games. If you’ve been through the gauntlet of top-end horror rooms in Athens or Spain then you won’t find it especially extreme, but it’s intense by British standards. Don’t expect an escape room as such, expect something closer to immersive theatre, where you play-act your way through the script of a horror movie. On that basis it’s an unusual, gripping and sometimes funny hour that may (or may not?) also frighten you silly. 
