Crawley, Feb 2022
Inside the Tulleys escape barn is a large and welcoming lobby with doors leading off to their five main escape rooms. Outside, before you enter, there is a pair of small caravans, huddled off to the side. These are Kraken Casino and Tick Tock Circus, the neglected step children of Tulleys’ line-up.
Okay, that description might be a little unfair, but the company takes pains to separate these two from the other five rooms. Not only are they rated as easier and described as introductory games, but they’re available at a lower price and given a different label, as ‘escape games’ rather than ‘escape rooms’. More importantly, unlike the main games at Tulleys, these two appear to be purchased designs not homegrown.
Kraken Casino is a single room and you wouldn’t want to play it with more than three at the most. It has a structure that’s common to other off-the-peg games, where each puzzle is a self-contained unit, well themed and nicely presented, and completing one gives you an item needed for the next. Also in common to such games, it had an emphasis on electronic and other non-padlock mechanisms that were often fussy about accepting the solution, or a bit laborious to use in other ways.
The flow felt bumpy for us throughout, particularly so at the start. Even though we played Casino with three players, it was very noticeable that in Casino we bottlenecked and got in each other’s way, in a way that didn’t happen with a larger group in their bigger games.
Playing Kraken worked fine as a warm-up before their other games; and in fact really highlighted the across-the-board superior design and construction of the main Tulleys rooms. Although they suggest Kraken as an introductory option for beginners, I’m not sure that’s a good idea – better for first time players to be wowed with the full premium experience than possibly put off by something smaller scale and bumpier. (Our teammates who tried Tick Tock found it pleasant but very easy, so that might work better for a newbie group looking for something not too tricky.)
Kraken was an okay experience, but with five first rate escape rooms available at Tulleys, there’s very little reason for enthusiasts to play it, unless you have an awkward gap in your schedule to fill. 
