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Escape Hull: The Darker Side of Hull

First impressions aren’t that exciting but this turns out to be a pretty game with a reasonable flow of logical puzzles. It’s not going to knock your socks off but, if you want a game that showcases some of the history of the city, is generally pleasant to be in and serves up a decent set of puzzles, then this will do nicely.

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Cryptx (Cambridge): The Gaol

It’s not a game where you’ll be amazed by the decor or with amazingly challenging puzzles but there’s enough here to carry the game and little that will cause frustration.

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By © ErikvanB / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55468780

© ErikvanB / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 (not a picture of the actual room) Outside the room Cryptx is an unusual venue. It’s eschewed the usual city centre or industrial outskirts and instead opted for a location that’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It’s a bold move that suggests a certain confidence in their games,
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- Overall rating:
The Live Escape (Huddersfield): Underground

A fun, coherent game with a reasonable theme and fun puzzles. At times some of those challenges were shoehorned in to the room but overall a very solid game.

A Door in a Wall (London): Dead Drop

Back to their best: Dead Drop is A Door in a Wall’s usual combination of great performance, fun puzzles, a convoluted mystery and a smattering of outrageous puns. I highly recommend.

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Trapped In (Bury): CSI

A fun game that isn’t likely to wow but should keep you entertained for most of an hour with a decent variety of puzzles.

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Trapped In (Bury): Interstellar

A thoroughly polished game that I’d put right up there as one of the best in the North West. Looks beautiful, lots of puzzles and a very good structure to the game is topped off by a finale that felt it was taken straight from Star Trek.

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Time Race (Bury): Vault 17

A sprawling game with some interesting challenges but an ambiguous opening puzzle got the room off to a bad start and a series of rough-around-the-edges challenges throughout the game left us ultimately frustrated.