September 2018

- Overall rating:
CTRL ALT ESC (Margate): Spacescape

A high-quality game that I’d recommend playing. Fun puzzles, but the real stand-outs were the sense of exploration, the humorous interactions with a game character and an interesting start and finish.

- Overall rating:
Get Lost Escape Rooms (Dover): The Abandoned Cottage

A fun and pretty game with good puzzle structure and a subtle story running through the experience. A little heavy on the search and a few too many padlocks, but still a good game.

- Overall rating:
Get Lost Escape Rooms (Dover): World Fair Hotel

A fun game with a fantastic sense of exploration. For me, there was a bit too much searching and fewer puzzles than I’d like to see, but that didn’t dent the core enjoyment of the experience.

Netherlands Escape Review: Project Escape (Nijmegen)

Great games focusing on immersion and making use of strong in-character introductions to get the experiences off to a fantastic start. Two of their games were good but Ramkraak is a truly great game with an amazing intro, solid puzzles, a neat mechanic and an awesome ending. Well worth a detour.

- Overall rating:
The Panic Room (Gravesend): Resurgency

The first Panic Room game that I’ve not enjoyed. It’s impressive what they’ve squeezed into a small footprint and I think there’s a solid core game here but we kept on finding aspects of it that disappointed us.

A Door in a Wall (London): Dead Man's Hand

Dead Man’s Hand wasn’t my favourite of the A Door in a Wall games but it’s still a very enjoyable experience and I suspect that we went a long just a little too early to fully appreciate it.

- Overall rating:
Imperial War Museums/HMS Belfast/Clockwork Dog (London): Damage Control

It was always going to be tough to create a compelling experience given that it had to be targeted at families and was only thirty minutes long. For me., while it was was still fun, it lost some of the magic of escape rooms and didn’t show off Clockwork Dog’s talents.

My favourite 25 games across Europe

A round-up of the best games I’ve played across Europe. From sci-fi to scary, archaeologist to zoo keeper, high intensity to calming these are the games I most recommend to enthusiasts.