Here’s this week’s round up of all I’ve heard about the local escape room scene. If there’s anything you think is missing from here or you have some news then let me know via email and I’ll add it in the next update.

Company news and rumours

• London
  • Sherlock Unlock opened Mutiny, a five player game.
  • Here’s some coverage and pictures of last week’s Alcatrapped mini escape room promotion in London.
  • Handmade Mysteries, the people behind Lady Chastity’s Reserve, mentioned their three minute mini game, Plumbottom’s Return, in a recent interview as well as a host of other interesting stuff. From the sounds of it, it’s available to hire for festivals and other events. They also mention that they’re working on two further games, although it’s not clear where these would be based.
• Yorkshire and the Humber
  • Enigma Rooms opened their third game, Hostage
  • Enter. Solve. Conquer. seem to be getting their media coverage lined up nicely with yet another article about them, this time in the Chesterfield News.
  • The Press, one of York’s local papers, had a short piece on Can You Escape? (the York branch, obviously).
  • The Star, a Sheffield-based paper, is running a competition to win six sets of tickets to the Great Escape.
• Scotland (HT to Exit Games Scotland who pointed out all three new companies/games)
  • Congrats to Breakout Games (the Aberdeen and Inverness company) who were nominated in the “Business success under three years” category in the Elevator Awards – they didn’t win, but a fantastic achievement to make it to the final three and be up against companies in more traditional industries.
  • It’s been around for a while but it’s just come to my attention that there’s an escape room in Peterhead – Escafun. Only a single game by the looks of it, although there may be two copies based on the Facebook feed.
  • Escape Games Scotland‘s second venue in Dundee opened its doors with two games: C.A.R.A and Black Pearl.
  • Escape Glasgow closed down one of their copies of the Classic Escape Game and replaced with something entirely new: EMCU – the Escape Mysterious Crimes Unit.
  • aMAZEing Places opened up last week offering a variety of games. It’s not clear to me exactly how it works, but they appear to run escape games on a subset of the days that they’re open and different sets of games are offered each time. From reading the website, it appears they’re planning on having six different games to play long term.
  • The new escape room in Pollok House, Escape the Past, was covered by the Evening Times.
• South of England
  • Escape Reading opened on Monday, finally closing a huge gap in the UK market. The venue offers two games to start with, the Library and the Bank Robbery.
  • You wait forever for a bus, then two come along at once – a second company obviously has its eyes on Reading and they’re putting out feelers with an event during the Reading Fringe. TimeTrap‘s first game is The Dungeon, but they’re looking to find permanent premises in the Autumn and hope to have three rooms.
  • TimeTrap also got some coverage in getreading, one of the local news sites
  • A new game opened a couple of weeks ago in Hastings. Abducted Live offers two mode for playing – the normal game lasts 60 minutes and appears to be a typical escape game while the Extreme version is 90 minutes and has disclaimers suggesting that it’s probably a little scary…
  • A Curious Escape, Fareham, closed its doors for seemingly the last time.
  • ExCLUEsive Games, the Newbury escape game, was covered in the Newbury and Thatcham Observer.
  • See also the mention of Handmade Mysteries/Lady Chastity’s Reserve in the London section
• North West England
  • Breakout Manchester advertised their new game Reclassified – yet to be see whether that’s entirely different from the existing game or just a reworking. The hint is very much the former.
  • Cliffhanger Rooms opened with two games: The Pharaoh’s Curse and Bank Vault Heist
  • Chester looks like it’s going to get its second game. Escapism Chester is due to open in mid-August with four different rooms: Taken, Amphitheatre, Area 51 and Espionage.
  • Tick Tock Unlock were representing Escape Games at the blooloop festival, speaking at a session on visitor engagement.
• Northern Ireland
  • The Northern Irish arm of Edinburgh’s Escape Hour, Escape Rooms Belfast, opened on 25th June with two copies of Major Plott’s revenge.
• Elsewhere – because some non-UK/Irish escape room news is interesting.
  • A little out of date, but I came across this article on the ITV website about the Escape Tunnel, Jersey’s historical escape game.

Current Discounts

(Note that these are checked every week, so apologies if some are out of date!)

• Escape Livingston. £29 for up to 5 people.
• Clue HQ Glasgow. £39 for up to 6 people.
• Quest Room in London. £52 for up to 5 people, £34 for up to 3 people.
• Instinctive Games in Mansfield. £19-34 for 2-5 people.
• ExCLUEsive Games in Newbury. £44 for a team of 3-6 people.
• Escape Live in Southend-on-Sea. £35 for up to 5 people.
• Alien Escape in Southend-on-Sea. £15 per person or £55 for 4.
• BreakFreeNI in Lisburn. £39 for up to 6 people.
• Escap3d in Belfast. £36 for up to 8 people.
• Devastate in Swansea. £45 for up to 5 people.
• Code to Exit in Altrincham. £25-40 for 2-4 people (Blueprint only).
• Lockdown Escape in Warrington. £39 for up to 6 people (The Lost Souls only)
• Trapped in Bury are running a discount for their Cursed Clown Carnival. Use CCC30 to get 30% off
• Escape Game card valid at a number of rooms across the UK and costing $20.

That’s all folks

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

Thanks for reading!