Verone: Don’t Take A Breath

Don’t Take A Breath is not exactly an escape room, and booking it may take some effort – but if you can, it’s absolutely worth it.

The story is based on 2016 horror movie Don’t Breathe, about a group of young burglars unwisely attempting to steal cash from a blind man’s house. The film provides not just high level inspiration but also a great many details of the set and action. The game website encourages you to see the film before playing, and seeing it will definitely help you appreciate how meticulous a homage this game is, and will also make the story easier to follow in detail. On the other hand, playing without any prior knowledge could make some of the twists all the more powerful.

Watching the film beforehand also made us question nervous of just what we were letting ourselves in for. On that front, you needn’t worry all that much. This is not a scary experience, by Athens standards. It’s certainly intense and physical, and it will make you jump and probably also paranoid of shadows, but the adrenaline comes more from action than from terror. The most gruesome and disturbing parts of the film don’t feature in the game: it’s designed for players to enjoy not be terrorised by.

The final warning to note is that booking is by direct enquiry only, and depends entirely on the owner’s availability. He runs all games, and slots are only available when he is. Persistence, patience and flexibility may be needed to secure a booking. However, that means that if you do get a session, it’ll be run by the game’s designer, and that’s important: this is a highly interactive experience played between you and the actor, and his performance is the core of the game.

Puzzle-solving is not a central part of Don’t Take A Breath. There are puzzles and you do need to solve them, but if you’re struggling at all you’ll be quickly nudged in the right direction. With most games that would annoy me no end. Here I didn’t mind at all, because solving is a side-show.

The other star of the game is its set. Don’t Take A Breath has a huge, sprawling, intricate set, on a scale I’ve rarely seen anywhere. Clutter and extraneous items in an escape room are usually a bad idea, because they become confusing distractions from the puzzles, but the nature of the game means that’s not a problem here, and the environment is closer to a Punchdrunk production in the level of detail with which the old man’s house is constructed.

This is all augmented by a sound and light – and smell! – system that is so extensive and effective that I quickly moved from being impressed by it to just accepting it as part of the game world I’d entered.

Not quite an escape room or a horror experience, though including elements of both, I’d describe it as a game based on action and story. It’s distinctive and wildly immersive, and left me wanting to bring friends to try it whether or not they’re into escape rooms. Get a session for it if you can.