jontheescapegoat

Our first Escape Room in Cornwall was great fun. It is based on the idea that you must banish an unruly spirit from your room in the hour. 

It was a bit of a slow start, however once we grasped the first puzzle it flowed pretty well. The room was immersive and had a few jumpy moments - I won't spoil them but it was fun! The design of the room was done well and it felt pretty realistic. 

The puzzles varied in difficulty, but in the main weren't too hard for more experienced players. There was a good variety of codes, magnet puzzles and one or two supernatural interventions... ;) the room was generally linear, although there were some exceptions where you could do other things and the order wouldn't slow your progress.

The GM was very responsive with clues, asking us prior to starting if we would prefer to ask for clues or whether he should give us a nudge on the screen if we were clearly struggling. We opted to ask for clues rather than be given them - we needed three (AVG. Of 10 apparently) and they were delivered promptly. The GM was very chatty afterwards and seemed like a friendly guy. 

Overall we enjoyed the room and would recommend it to intermediate players (in small numbers) and above. For newer players I'd suggest four/five in a team. 

We will return to try Housetrap's other rooms based on our experience - great host, immersive room, and good fun. 

We played this game at their new premises in Whitechapel. 

Two in our group had played 25-30 rooms, one had never played, so we had an interesting mix. The room was small (it is London) and it is a split start - you start in the ship's brig and have to escape your cells to get started. We've played several of the Escape franchise rooms and this one is probably the trickiest we've played. Unusually for Escape, a lot of the puzzles are magnetised and immersive, rather than codes/padlocks which was a welcome change. We had fun with this room and we did need a couple of hints from Erik, who was an attentive and helpful GM - not excessively forthcoming with hints, which was good. He did make us dance for a clue which was funny!

I won't give away the room but it was a bit more of a challenge than Escape's usual fare and the design was very nicely done. Well done Escape, more of this please.  

The room was nicely designed, satisfyingly tricky and almost beat us.

It was fun to go back to an 80s-90s arcade vibe. I've marked broken tech - it wasn't exactly broken, but one puzzle was clearly a little faulty - we wasted several minutes on it when we had done things correctly but the connection was not being made. 

Probably my favourite room at Escape Plymouth.

Reportedly their hardest room, slightly more challenging than the others but good fun. Half a mark taken off for basic room design, but this is consistent throughout the company. 

This is a break-in, not a break out. The building itself is an old bank and you're literally breaking into the former vault - nice twist. 

We struggled with a couple of puzzles at the start, but this was us being thick rather than the room letting us down in any way. As I recall, we escaped in the nick of time, but we could have been faster if we had thought about it more. 

The room was a little basic in design and looked like it had been done on a bit of a budget, compared to their other rooms, but we still enjoyed it and importantly: escaped. 

The room was wonderful to look at, looked like something out of a movie set. The host, however we found to be quite narcissistic, rude to one of the players at one point and the initial briefing highly contradictory. E.g. we were told don't go off pulling things apart and looking for things, you don't need to (yes you really do); there are no codes to find (yes there are); take things highly literally, don't overthink (don't take it literally, it's lateral thinking). 

The room is excellently built and it has the potential to be a truly fantastic room, but it's been spoiled by personality. Looking at other reviews, it would appear that others have had the same experience over the years. We can't all be wrong. 

Beautifully-designed room. You're a South Devon unit of the Home Guard, ready to repel the invasion. The puzzles were varied, not too easy to solve and the room was satisfyingly tricky to beat. Our GM was a great host and knew exactly when to give us a nudge. I look forward to trying their other rooms. 

This room was a recommendation from this very website as one not to miss if visiting Edinburgh, and boy you lot were right. 

Very immersive, 18th century Edinburgh. The GMs were in character from the moment they opened the door and welcomed us into the doctor's office. The room was beautifully designed and built and very realistic. The GMs worked well together and we were immersed in the story from the start. No spoilers, but the story leads you and there is plenty to get stuck into, it's not all locks and codes. We really enjoyed this room and there was a not-unexpected, but interesting twist at the end. Highly recommend this room. 3-4/5 for difficulty - not quite hard, but not easy either. 

Excellent room with good puzzles! Great effect being handcuffed and having to escape that at the start. Multiple rooms within the room and very real feel (particularly when people walking up the stairs outside sounds like your captor coming back lol). We enjoyed this room a lot and would happily play their other games. The room provided a good, healthy amount of challenge and was thought provoking. Hint: look around and use anything in the room! Highly recommended. 

Update, 17/10/23. Since completed the room in 52 minutes.

The only Escapism room we've failed.  

However it was very clearly human error and not a bad room - Escapism call this their easiest room however I disagree, Forge was a lot easier. It's a Hansel and Gretel themed room, you start separated with one in the oven and have to work together to get the one in the oven out. There are a good variety of puzzles, but we found a couple of them a little too tricky, which led to our demise! This is certainly not the room being too hard - we were clearly having an off-day and would love to try again. There are a variety of logic, maths, matching up and lock puzzles to get through and as always the GMs are enthusiastic, timely with hints and make you feel welcome. 

Of all their rooms, this one felt a little weak. It felt like it was made more for kids and the décor was a little off-centre - it looked like they let a couple of newbies have a go. That being said, the optional added difficulty was novel and we found the puzzles to be quite linear and easily worked through, we finished the first part of the room in just over half an hour and then took ten minutes for the optional extra. We didn't feel overly challenged by this room but I imagine it will be a good family friendly or starter room. 

Good, fun room with some interesting puzzles. One puzzle I'd not encountered before and I'll take that lesson with me, this was one of my preferred rooms here.

We played this in the dark with torches as part of their Hallowe'en promotion. This made it much more fun and added to the theme of being in a dark place at night, looking for clues. It was a fun room and nearly took us the hour (while we like to finish in a good time, we also like to get our money's worth - as an actress said to a bishop). The puzzles were -based in the main and a couple weren't entirely relevant but not detrimental to the game. Good, fun room.  Wasn't hugely difficult but provided a good enough challenge.