elfgrunge

Been waiting to play this game for ages, and it lives up to its reputation! It’s definitely the most expensive room I’ve played, but you understand why by the end. Puzzles may be a little lacking, but by god, the spectacle. It really makes the best of being on a boat, and I’d encourage anyone visiting dublin to visit just for the experience.

Eoghan and Sparsh were excellent hosts for this wonderful, unique venue! 

Definitely one for small, experienced teams. The first half, maybe even 3/4 of the room is linear. We always had at least two people just sitting around doing nothing. 

The puzzles themselves range from “fine” to “pretty good”, and there’s some REALLY lovely special effects for the horror aspects, but the signposting is awful. Not illogical, it makes sense in retrospect, just some leaps. 

The decor is really nice, same high quality as all the other rooms from this company, really excellent immersion, but the attempts at a storyline don’t quite work since you’re just standing round a TV trying to hear what’s being said. 

I don’t like criticising GMs, because we all have bad days at work, but I’m assuming the monitoring system in the room wasn’t the best. 

Very nice, logical room. Your classic escape room, a lot more locks than Locked In’s other tech heavy rooms. Excellent hosting, thank you Chris!

Another absolutely gorgeous room from Locked In! The sound design in particular is excellent. It would be really good to play back to back with Bloodline, they feel like they share a lot of DNA. Hosting was wonderful as ever, thanks Chris, and particular shout out to Locked In for accommodating our weird booking times. 

I'm honestly not sure why this game didn't seem to click with anyone in my group - Individually there so many cool inventive elements that I would never expect in a box game, but I think the whole thing just seemed to drag a bit. Perhaps 4 people was too many, but I also couldn't imagine sitting this and playing by myself for 3+ hours. I would definitely encourage other people to give it a go, I was /impressed/ by a lot of it, but we were honestly just bored by the sheer amount of stuff in it by the end. Even though it encourages you to split up play time, I think I would have preferred it as two or even three shorter games, with greater emphasis on story.

Fastest personal time, and fastest time (so far) for this room! Really enjoyed it, I was super excited to find out what escape reality can do when allowed to build their own rooms, and it doesn’t disappoint! A lot of fun stuff, lovely theming and well fitted puzzles. 

I cannot emphasise just how fun this room is - I’ve been waiting to play it for ages since I found out Escape Reality had let their own staff design two rooms, and it lives up to every hope for what that could mean for a room. Funny, inventive, immersive and just joyful to play.

Played for free via Uni - I didn't think I'd like scavenger hunt style games, but I really enjoyed this! The murder mystery style element makes you feel like you have a real objective, and I enjoyed how it was 'Here's your location to go to, once you get there the location will help you solve a puzzle' as opposed to just figuring out how to move about. The puzzles were all very creative, and most of them were completely logical, except for a little confusion at the end. 

Had a lot of fun, but the room itself wasn’t terribly original. A couple of puzzles I’d seen before, and I expected a bit less number locks considering the theme. It’s branded as their hardest room but I wouldn’t call it very hard, just a lot to do if you’re a small team.  

I AM a sucker for any room that lets you wear on-theme props while you play though, and there’s real sand! So an extra half star is for sand. Love sand. 

GM was lovely! 

Played the Edinburgh Fringe version so rating may not be accurate for its regular version.

Great hosting but very simple puzzles, probably because it’s a travel-light version for easy set up at the fringe. We were the only two playing, which made it a bit trickier to solve, but I also don’t know how I would’ve felt about working with strangers, especially when it looked like it could’ve taken up to 15ish. 

We solved every individual puzzle, but didn’t get enough time to solve the mystery so ended up poisoned. Quite a fun format to mix the puzzles and actual story-based mystery solving, but I would’ve enjoyed it in a more fleshed out format without the tiny 30 minute limit. 

For future players - Be mindful this was made in 2020, you may have to turn back the clock slightly at certain points...

A really excellent room! Multiple stand-out moments, I was having fun the entire time. The props and theming are immaculate and play so well into being both set pieces and puzzles in one. Our GM Meri was so wonderful and friendly before and after. 

An absolutely gorgeous room! Beautifully designed, some incredible tech, and a really well integrated storyline. 

A really fun room! There was a little bit of jank from time to time, but any confusion or breakages were handled really quickly by our super nice games master (thanks Amy!) 

A lot of really original puzzles, and I enjoyed that it was a lot of practical, real world magic tricks  as opposed to escape rooms trying to do “real magic”. Very bright and colourful, banging soundtrack, so even in times of confusion I was having FUN.

One specific puzzle made me ask the games master how it was done (in the practical sense) after, which to me was the mark of an inventive room that doesn’t cut corners with it’s immersion. 

This is the second game from this series I’ve played, and it felt a little lacklustre in comparison. The quality of the materials was still great, but it just felt like there wasn’t enough information to be gained to really feel like you were solving a complex case, unlike Antarctica. It definitely took us a lot less time, and while I can’t fault any of the puzzles it gave us, it just felt like there should’ve been more to it. 

You may enjoy it more if you don’t have expectations going in though, as it’s still a solid game. 

Really gorgeous production value, clearly a lot of care went into the game's creation. However puzzles felt quite unrelated, with some a bit too simple, or too convoluted (you can only get the answer to one by going against the games own instructions?). Nevertheless, a pretty fun time with a cool theme. 

Really brilliant box game! A cohesive and interesting storyline that tied together really well - it's branded as a 'Murder mystery case file' and it definitely lives up to it, having to put information together rather than a series of unrelated puzzles. Requires some internet usage it's really seamlessly integrated in an interesting way. The info document also doesn't set a specific time limit, just urging you to get it done by the 'end of the day', which I personally really enjoyed as you can really enjoy working everything out and finding all the lore without feeling rushed. 

Played it at Christmas with my family - We didn't manage to escape before the kids demanded we did something else. The puzzles we did manage to complete were a bit frustrating, but the box art is absolutely gorgeous and the packaging of each train car as a puzzle was genius.

The first game I ever played and still one of the best! It's clever, beautiful and incredibly immersive. It's an independent room and the care that went into it is clear, and it's the only room I've played where the GM's are in costume and in-character! 

The only room I've ever failed, and what a worthy foe! It boasted a 7% escape rate at time of play and it definitely earns it, but never did I feel frustrated in the room. Everything was logical, it was just chocked full of puzzle that you have to be careful to take your time working on, meaning its probably better for a larger team. The staff were absolutely lovely, and the room was very immersive. I could see where it was leading before our time ran out, we just couldn't quite make it. Despite that, a very enjoyable game!

Rooms built for two are rare, and it very much delivers on that without making any of the puzzles too easy - but a lot of them are rather unintuitive. Two of them, due to factors I won't disclose for spoilers - were borderline impossible to our group for reasons unrelated to our ability to puzzle solve, while another is a good puzzle idea quite badly executed. I can definitely see it being a fun date night for casual players though. Poor hosting tag added not because we had a bad GM, but because they had to run immediately away (presumably to another group) so we got no de-brief and had to see ourselves out. 

The room is absolutely gorgeous, with some beautiful details and a couple of really original puzzles. However, it was really let down by quite a few illogical puzzles, including an incredible amount of written information that did not end up contributing to the game, and really just served to slow us down. It's non-linear style ended up being more confusing than beneficial, too. 

Easily the best room I've ever played. I'm limited to three tags but I wish I could use more - immersive, epic, story driven, clever and incredibly original, with the most brilliant GM. I'm struggling to describe it without spoiling it, but it's unlike any other room I've seen, with some puzzles just feeling too good to be allowed. It's so brilliantly designed that it really earns the descriptor of "Feeling like a video game", or making the players feel like protagonists in a classic noir thriller. The story is engaging and evolves throughout the game, rather than being a throwaway justification at the start. I'll repeat what every other player also seems to be obsessed with: The ending. My god. The ending.