Author Archives: escapethereview

Clue HQ Birmingham: Captain Riddle’s Forgotten Fortune

Birmingham, Sep 2017

Whispers on the grapevine (okay, mainly Facebook) suggested that with Captain Riddle, Clue HQ had upped their game and built something quite special, so it was a priority for our visit to Birmingham. Actually, it’d probably have been a priority anyho… (more)

Clue HQ Birmingham: A-I-9

Birmingham, Sep 2017

I’m a sucker for most sci-fi themes, so with a choice of games for a morning slot at Clue HQ’s Birmingham branch I went straight for A-I-9’s story of battling a rogue artificial intelligence. Also, the alternatives were their Cell Block C and Bunker … (more)

ClueCapers: Rescue from Winchokey

Winchester, Sep 2017

Winchokey is ClueCapers’ second escape room, and has a prison escape theme – hence the ‘chokey’ in the name. The venue frames its games as excursions through a portal into a parallel universe, and here your task is to rescue a fellow portal traveller… (more)

ClueCapers: Mission to Winchintzy

Winchester, Sep 2017

ClueCapers have memorably idiosyncratic names for their games, and it was some time after I’d first heard of them that I realised the name Winchintzy referred to the theme: chintz. The official storyline has you travelling through a portal into a par… (more)

Lock and Code: Breakout!

Weston-super-mare, Aug 2017

Breakout! is Lock and Code’s third game, the first in their town centre branch, and the most ambitious of their three so far. It’s set in a future dystopia with post-apocalyptic overtones, with more than a few sly nods to the Fallout computer game se… (more)

Lock and Code: The Alchemy Enigma

Weston-super-mare, Aug 2017

After the prolonged darkness of Lock and Code’s first game, I was looking forward to a nice well-lit room for their Alchemist game, and my heart sunk when we were passed a set of torches once again. Fortunately the light levels were a lot more friend… (more)

Lock and Code: The Last Victim

Weston-super-mare, Aug 2017

Lock and Code is currently Weston-super-mare’s only escape game venue, and it’s an enthusiast-run operation split across two locations. Their original location with their first two games is a little way out of town, and their third game is in a separ… (more)

Lockhouse Escape Games: Armageddon

Cambridge, Aug 2017

For some reason both the escape game venues currently open in central Cambridge use room designs from Hungarian company TRAP. I played most of the TRAP games in Budapest some years ago, but Armageddon is one of the designs that didn’t exist at that t… (more)

Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment

Room-in-a-box, Sep 2017

Back in early 2016, there was a Kickstarter campaign for a boxed version of an escape room. At the time it was an entirely novel concept and excited backers poured in close to seven times the funding goal. Crowdfunded products have a tendency to slid… (more)

Unlock!: Fifth Avenue

Room-in-a-box, Aug 2017

The initial release of Unlock! came packaged with a 10 min intro game, but also provided a 30 min free print and play game, The Elite. Fifth Avenue is a second free print and play game of the same length as The Elite. There appear to be two more prin… (more)