Tag: world war II

TimeTrap Escape Rooms – Station X

Summary
Like a good wine, TimeTrap improves with age. This, their fourth escape game, demonstrates a provider that has built on success, learned from errors, dreamed up new ideas and concepts of how an escape room should work, and put on an extremely enjoyable experience. You should go. Yes, you.

Review
Whilst I’m certainly nowhere near the escapades of some of the more prolific players and bloggers, I’m approaching my 50th game. That tends to mean that most of the puzzles I come across are variations on something similar that I’ve seen in the past, some executed well, some less so. Not here. No tropes are allowed through the ticket barriers. We were invited for a preview the day before they opened.
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Operation Escape – The Ops Room

Summary
A great example of how a low-tech escape room need not be written off as “Gen 1”. The Ops Room is a great first escape experience and tied its puzzles together wonderfully.

Review
Living in south-east London, it’s a bit of a surprise that I hadn’t been out here much earlier.

I’ve probably reached that stage that I need to stop booking rooms out of my London Escapists email, because our host welcomed us having read the site and knowing “the reviewers are in” – maybe I’d prefer it to be a surprise. She was in a period uniform and very welcoming and friendly.
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Lucardo – Espionage

Summary
I’d heard a lot of good things about Lucardo and so when I knew I’d have a Saturday evening free in Manchester it was top of my to-do list. Espionage is a World War II themed room with very little linearity and mostly straightforward puzzles, great for beginners.

Review
Espionage is rated as the least difficult of Lucardo’s five rooms. A new subset of Team Judge was playing, with a total of two games’ worth of experience between everyone other than me, so it seemed a sensible choice. I had hoped to play The Dream on recommendation, but as we booked so late it wasn’t available.
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Escape Rooms Angel – The Dark Side of the Moon

Summary
One of London’s newest rooms, sadly disappointed us with the theme and with a mechanical breakdown that terminated our game part way through. I suspect they’ll get over the teething problems in due course, but few of the puzzles made sense much less indicated what to do, and this isn’t saved by the amazing technology, set design, and build.

Review
At an enthusiasts’ meetup a few months ago, The Logic Escapes Me and I were discussing the relative merits of attending and playing rooms early in the run. I like the idea of getting in early to deliver a review which will help others decide whether they’d like to play or not. The opposing viewpoint is that you could get caught up in teething issues or untested rooms. And sadly, that was what happened to us this time around.
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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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Escape Plan Ltd. – The Adventure Begins

Summary
A WW2-themed escape with a range of deduction, search, and mechanical puzzles – many of which were on theme. Low-tech but they have made a lot of a limiting premises. Pretty high reliance on padlocks.

Review
Iliffe Yard is a curious little cobbled location near Elephant & Castle. We were a bit early but not early enough to wait in the recommended café so stood around outside the venue for a little while. Team Amaze was on duty for this one. We’d been warned there was no room for early arrivals or for waiting and this is no joke: the control room cum waiting area is a small corridor about 3 feet by 15 and it is literally impossible for a team that’s just finished to occupy the space as well as an arriving team.

The goal of the room is to escape a POW camp in wartime Germany. One unique aspect is that before starting we were handed a booklet of the diary of Bob Hails, which contained a range of clues and material to be used once in. This was slick and well-prepared, and we had the chance to peruse it before we were on the clock.
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