Month: November 2016

Mission Breakout – Codebreakers

Summary
This could have been so much more. An awesome location and a decent concept let down by confusing puzzles and a string of defects.

Review
When I first found out about Mission Breakout and the amazing setting of an abandoned London Underground station, it jumped up high on the list of places I wanted to try out. Team Ninty was able to gather together to play.

The premise here is that MI6 has found a leak, raided a bunker and switched off all the decoding machinery, and that you need to switch them back on and decode the source of the leak before they come back in an hour and you all get nicked.
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Time Run – The Lance of Longinus

Summary
Well-renowned as London’s top escape venue, Time Run has it all. Theming, technology, puzzles, settings, media, interactivity, staff attention, and everything else are out of this world. This room is simply amazing. Go and play it already.

Review
Time Run was on my radar from shortly after I discovered escape rooms in 2014. It was a clear favourite of the reviews I’d read. I was saving it for a special occasion, and that actually started to drag on a bit.
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Lock’d – Perpetuum Mobile

Summary
We loved the tech and theming of the room, which a lot of love and effort has clearly gone into. Pretty short though.

Review
Having played the venue’s other two games earlier that day, we found out that Perpetuum Mobile was free in the next slot and our host reeled us in with a discount, the room otherwise likely to go empty. It would have been rude not to.

We were invited to don lab coats to play; I must say I think this is becoming a bit of a trope. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve come across it and whilst it’s cute for newbies, it’s usually a combination of overheating and uncomfortable for the rest of us. Less, please.
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Lock’d – Museum Warehouse

Summary
This room has a good premise and a few clever flashes of tech, but is let down by too little to do, unexciting puzzles, and loads of red herrings.

Review
This was our second of what was planned to be two (but ended up as three) rooms in one day at Lock’d. Having polished off Grandpa’s Last Will we were expecting a step up in difficulty. Our excellent host gave us the initial briefing – the premise was needing to break into the museum and recover three statuettes which would also (for some reason) release the exit door.
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Lock’d – Grandpa’s Last Will

Summary
Billed for new players, Grandpa’s Last Will is a pleasant room for new players. Not too linear and quite straightforward and manageable.

Review
My mission, having chosen to accept it, was to book 13 people of Team Judge into one, two, or three escape rooms over three sessions on a quiet Monday in October. This was similar in difficulty to the room: an initial call and email to investigate whether 25 person-games worth of sales might elicit a discount went unanswered, and when I went ahead to book online, to my horror the other two rooms were blocked out after I booked the first one at 11am. More calls and emails went nowhere, so when they randomly reopened for booking a few days later I snapped them up. Problem 1 out of the way.

Round 2 was on arrival. The address and postcode on the website are not well-liked by Google Maps, which directed me to a different street and around the corner. To be fair, Lock’d has a very clear map on its website of where you need to go in.
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