Lucardo Manchester: The Prison

Virginia House, 5-7 Great Ancoats Street, M4 5AD

2-6 players

60 minutes

Wheelchair suitable - contact the venue for details

You and your team of criminals are due to be checked into the Category A prison facility in Manchester after committing a series of crimes. As hardened criminals you have connections on the inside - they are staging a riot allowing you the opportunity to try and escape. Time will be limited. You will need to use deception, bribery and skill to attempt this escape. Get caught and you will never get to see the outside world again.

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Overall rating

based on ratings from 25 users
combined with 6 pro reviews

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Your review

Player reviews

Speedy Sloth expert rated this:

☕Joe Brown expert rated this:

Played: 3 Apr 2022 Team size: 4

Different take on the escape room format, some great theatrical moments but a few frustrating puzzles

tom.mortismith rated this:

Played: 17th June 2019 Team size: 2 Time taken: Finished in 51:54 Outcome: Successful escape!

Lucardo's Prison is one heck of a game. It's obvious that the team have gone further than the extra mile to create an immersive, unforgettable game.

The immersion starts straight away. Having to put on an orange shirt, you feel very much like a prisoner, over more of an 'observer', just trying to complete puzzles. Next, the cell you start in is bare, again, to make the whole situation realistic.

And finally, ending in the guard's locker room, it's yet again obvious that they make sure this is immersive, primarily through the use of guard lockers, and a gang-sign 'cheat sheet'.

Overall, a very satisfying game, and really wish I could play it again!

Sabrina (The Overthinkers) expert rated this:

Played: 21/04/2019 Time taken: 31:46:00 Outcome: Successful escape!

Scotus0 expert rated this:

Played: 10/06/2019 Team size: 4 Time taken: 54:25 Outcome: Successful escape!

Fugitives!

I was excited to try Lucardo's newest room. In our brief, we were advised that there would only be one code to solve, and all the other puzzles would be hands-on...interesting!

Story

As convicted criminals, your fellow inmates are staging a riot, giving you one precious hour to escape. A common storyline, but executed brilliantly. Wait to see how it unfolds during your endeavours!

Puzzles

They were all practical, encouraging us to think like prisoners, utilising whatever tools were at our disposal. We struggled with a couple of them: without locks to work out codes for, sometimes it was tricky to ascertain what to do next. This kept us guessing and thinking creatively, though!

Mise-en-scène

The journey was impressively portrayed as a real prison-break through the equipment, clothing, props and decor. It was delivered like a piece of immersive theatre. Very, very good!

Final Comments

This was a funny, inventive and engaging room. Highly recommended!

🦡cipherdelic virtuoso rated this:

Anonymous rated this:

Played: 2020 Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!

Ronnie Meade experienced rated this:

Played: 5 Dec 2021 Team size: 2 Time taken: 48:00 Outcome: Successful escape!

originalimmersive

A great experience which immerses you in to a slightly different and more realistic prison break based more on practical tasks rather than solving puzzles for a code to padlocks. The GMs add to this experience and stay in character when checking in on their convicts and cell. A cleverly executed game with a fun end.

Mark Greenhalgh expert rated this:

Played: 07/04/19

Simon (The Overthinkers) expert rated this:

Played: 21 Apr 2019 Team size: 2 Time taken: 31:46 Outcome: Successful escape!

immersivegreat hostingintense

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Reviews by escape room review sites

Prison is one of the timeless escape room themes. It's been done so many times in many different styles that it's very difficult to build a prison game that feels original, doubly so because there's a very limited range of items you can plausibly put in a prison cell, and an obvious set of tropes to draw upon for puzzles. Nonetheless, Lucardo's take on the genre manages to take classic jailbreak ideas and turn them into a satisfyingly physical sequence of puzzles with something of an action-movi...

Lucardo continues to improve, and The Prison probably ranks as the best of the Manchester experiences. I may have had more fun in their University of Magic game because of its theme but, objectively, I think this is a more impressive experience: the puzzles fit the theme, there’s a better-than-average overarching story, and the moments of theatre deliver a coherent game that’s well worth playing.

A prison break is nothing new theme-wise, but this game was immersive and realistic and on a completely different level to not only to other similarly themed games, but also everything else on offer at Lucardo.

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A very unique and immersive experience that throws away some traditional escape room rules. A really excellent game.

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Lists

This game is part of the following user-created game lists:

Best UK escape rooms 2021 by Escape the Review virtuoso
These are the 100 highest rated escape rooms (out of 1600) in the UK, as of 31st Dec 2021, based on combined ratings from enthusiasts, bloggers and experts - every game here comes highly recommended.