August news and rumours

Exit games does an excellent blog on UK wide escape rooms, with regular news updates. If you’re not already a reader, then I highly recommend you sign up. I still think it’s interesting to have a page dedicated to London’s scene though, that can talk in a bit more detail about what’s going on, and occasionally, shamelessly, throw in a bit of unsubstantiated rumour.

The aim is for this to be a monthly publication, keeping track of all the news in the London Escape Room scene. Apologies in advance – I may leave some elements on for several months running if I still think they’d count as news to non-regular readers.

Competitions and special offers

Enigma Quests are crowdsourcing for their upcoming escape room, “School of Witchcraft and Wizardry“. For £51 you can get a room for 3-5 people, or if you’re looking to save as much money as possible, you can become a beta tester for a fiver a head. Both options seem remarkably good value in today’s escape game scene. Usual kickstarter caveats apply.

Enigma Escape are offering a 25% discount to their room until 17th August. For around £20 per person you can try to outwit the Killer. Check out our review of the room.

Play Exit Games have teamed up with Escape Plan Limited to give one lucky team free entry to Escape Plan’s recently opened room “The Adventure Begins“. Competition closes on 16th August.

Secret Studio are still offering their 50% introductory opening offer (so £13.50 per person). That’s been running for a few months now, and you’ve got to assume it won’t last forever, so if you’re interested in snapping it up then I’d recommend booking soon! Check out our review of the room.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

  • Escape room venues: 15
  • Escape rooms: 22
  • The Logic Escapes Me reviewed: 18
  • Next reviews: Escape Hunt – Escape from the Laboratory (August), Escape Plan Limited (September)

Rumours

According to one of the owners, Lock’d are on the verge of opening their next room. Judging by what I’ve seen in a couple of places, I expect it to be called Perpetuum Mobile. The website hints at another six rooms to open in Summer 2015, but given it’s already August, I think you should assume that’s a general plan for the future, and the other rooms will trickle out slowly as they gauge interest.

clueQuest have put out their teaser trailer for the third room in their (relatively) new Kings Cross premises. We’re not expecting this one to open to the general public till November or so though, so you’ll have to keep that enthusiasm under control for a little while longer.

AIEscape seems to be all set for opening – they’ve had planning permission for a few months and their Twitter feed suggests they’ve got most of the hurdles out the way, so we’re eagerly anticipating being able to visit a new London venue.

One site that’s been sitting under the radar for a very long time is containment.zone. They’re looking for a very different market from other escape rooms, so I’m keen to see them exit their test phase and go live..

While not strictly inside the M25, there are a couple of other escape room developments that might be within striking distance of London. Room Escapeist seems to be in the very early stages of planning a new site based in Essex – I’m still piecing together details from a variety of sources, so I’m not sure exactly where to expect it, but it may be close enough for a visit – fingers crossed! Up in Cambridge, I’ve not heard much from Cambridge Escape Rooms in a while, but last I did hear they were expecting to open over the Summer.

It’s questionable whether this really counts as Escape Rooms, but we’ve obviously got the Crystal Maze coming to London, with opening expected in October after a phenomenally successful crowdsourcing run. On the unsuccessful side was Hyde, from Slingshot Effects. They’ve since gone into liquidation, but the last update said they were aiming to open the Black Maze in London in time for Christmas – I wouldn’t bet against someone setting up a new firm to push forward that idea, although presumably time scales would change.

That’s all folks

That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect then let me know, or equally if you’re aware of other news, discounts of competitions, and I’ll include updates in the next edition.

Thanks for reading!

3 Comments



  1. // Reply

    The logical name for the series of your posts like this must surely be… (can’t embed the link due to spam-trapping, so see YouTube video -EUWh7Tr01E from about 1 minute 29 on)


    1. // Reply

      Nice. Cool video as well – enjoyed listening to someone who’d designed a room properly, and really thought about how it would work not just from a puzzle point of view, but from the social dynamic.

      (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EUWh7Tr01E)

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