How do you design a room where most people escape while still making sure that experienced players are suitably challenged? My musings on that, and more generally on “non-binary win conditions” – endings to game that are more than just pass/fail.

Outside the room You should really read my review of their other room. The two rooms are pretty much the same, but I can’t bring myself to write a virtually identical review. In fact, I’ve decided to make up for the rooms being so similar, by trying to make the reviews a bit different… So, picture it, our two
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Outside the room Sherlock Unlock opened to the public just before Christmas in a small business park in the Docklands. The location wasn’t great for us so we’d opted to play both games in one evening and save ourselves a return trip. In fact, I’d had so much interest that I’d booked both rooms for both slots. While there were
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Outside the room Ah, Breakout Liverpool. How do I hate thee? The last time I was here I lost a perfect record, and my London team mates have never let me live it down. It was a fair, albeit tough, game and I’m not one to shy away from a challenge, so I’d booked in
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I hope I didn’t hurt your neck getting you to look at this upside down.  Outside the room Exit Strategy had been on my to do list ever since I’d had a great time playing St Helens vs the Lizards which they’d helped produce. I was just pulling together my intinerary for a visit up North
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Outside the room After a break for lunch, we headed back to Escape Room Preston for a second game. If you’ve read the previous review, you’ll not be surprised to hear that we were only going back because we’d pre-booked tickets, but… we’d had a couple of hours to clear our heads and I was determined to go
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I’ve seen better vampires… Outside the room On a previous trip to Escape Room Preston we’d played a couple of their games and while we’d not been overwhelmed by them, we thought they were worthy of a second visit, so booked ourselves in for a double session as a romantic Valentine’s Day activity. First up: Vampire Chronicles. Nothing
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Outside the room What do you get if you lock three escape room bloggers in a room? I fancied finding out, so I reached out to the two other people who write UK escape game review sites, ReallyFun.UK (née QMSM) and Escape Game Addicts, and asked whether they fancied playing a game together. I really didn’t expect to
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Outside the room I first came across Extremescape back in August of last year and was immediately surprised by what they were doing. First, they’re in Disley, a village on the edge of the Peak District, not the traditional city/town home of existing escape games. Then they announced that their game was 90 minutes long, rather than the usual
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Outside the room Having really enjoyed Code to Exit‘s game last Summer, I’d been looking forward to coming back to play their new game “The Test”. In particular, I was curious about their no-locks claim. In the past, I’ve thought about designing rooms that don’t require any keys or combinations (frankly, I’ve fantasised about it while
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