Welcome to the February 2018 edition of the London-focused escape rumours post. Note that this is about London (and surrounding areas). If you want to know about games further afield, then follow exitgames.co.uk, where I publish a weekly update on the UK scene.
I’m continuing to catch up on my review backlog but, if you’re after an opinion, feel free to drop me an email and I’ll try to help.
Plans
It’s been a ridiculously quiet month for me, with just a single escape room trip – over to Escape Colchester in Essex. Don’t worry: I’ve not lost the love of escape rooms – I just decided that it might not be a bad thing to spend some time doing all the other things that take up my life!
Things are starting to hot up again now with a trip to Berlin to play a bunch of highly rated rooms, including three games at The Room and the much-talked-about Huxley VR game. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited!
On top of that, I’ve got games booked at Escape Plan (finally!), The Panic Room in Kent (Dinoland!) and Ctrl-Alt-Esc in Margate, as well as a trip down to the Vault Festival for Lamplighters (some sort of immersive gaming experience) and The Lifeboat – a thirty-minute escape room experience. Oh, and A Door in a Wall’s Dead Drop is booked in for early February too. It’s going to be a great month!
Beyond that, plans are vague, but expect a trip to Cologne in April and the Netherlands in May plus a bunch of smaller visits.
News and Rumours
The big news this month is that I launched a load of regional guides for the site, covering the likes of SE England, London and Scotland. These are proving pretty popular already, with each page containing a map of locations, links to all the reviews, some recommendations and a couple of random facts that may or may not be useful. Check them out via the menu above if you want to know more. Currently they’re available for most big regions of the UK plus various broken-down parts of SE and NW England, not to mention a massive guide for the whole of the UK (warning – this may load slowly on mobiles!). They’re continuing to evolve so, if you want anything to be added, just drop me an email.
London’s an expensive place to play escape rooms, so I’m always on the lookout for discounts to make it a little more affordable – the good news for you is that I published an article in January rounding up everything that was on offer.
The Lifeboat is a temporary escape room taking place at the Vault Festival until March. It’s only just opened, so I’ve not heard any reports about it, but obviously I’ve signed up anyway, so expect a review in mid-February. You can find out more about what immersive gaming is happening at the Vault Festival by reading my article here.
They’ve been open for three months, but I only recently came across two magic-themed children’s games in London. Kidzescape London are running The School of Wizardry and The Magic Lamp, which seem to target the 8-to-early-teens age group. No visits from escape room enthusiasts yet, but I’m aiming to take midi-Logic and mini-Logic along next month to check them out. Watch this space for reviews.
Breakout Rooms in Watford quietly opened their doors late last month with two copies of their first game, Spy Games, and three more in the pipeline.
Claustrophobia are about to enter the test phases for their first London rooms, so my guess is that they’ll be opening properly in early-to-mid-March. Expect three games to start with, expanding to five later in the year.
It’s been a while since an existing venue opened a new room in the capital, but Escape London are planning to do just that. The Cabin is opening in their Shepherds Bush premises at the end of next month and looks to be a scary game. Note that the same design is already installed at their Newcastle and Colchester venues.
Komnata London seem to have run some test events in London for their Covent Garden experience, which strongly points at them being close to opening properly. Their games have a pretty good reputation, so I’m excited to see what they produce. Based on their website, they are planning to open four games here, including the well respected and adult-oriented 7 Sinful Pleasures (Room Escape Artist reviewed the NY version if you want to know more). They’ve already opened Heart of Covent Garden, an immersive promenade that sounds intriguing.
Those of you who were playing escape rooms a year ago may remember a well known London company called Enter the Oubliette that closed due to their lease ending. Before that happened, though, it appears they were part of a mini-documentary – here’s a video interview all about the game.
Other cool stuff
A Door in a Wall are running Dead Drop on Tuesday evenings for several months. Don’t know what it is? You can read some of my reviews from earlier games/shows here (or wait till next month when I’ll have a review!)
The Grift is on till 25th March in Bethnal Green. One participant (in their promo video admittedly) described it as ‘escape room meets the Crystal Maze with immersive theatre’, which certainly got my attention, and a friend of a friend said it was good, so I’ll probably head along. Talking to the team behind the show, I’d characterise it as an immersive game with challenges but don’t expect to be competing as you might in, say, A Door in a Wall’s traditional games. Note that it’s closer to theatre prices than escape room prices, so expect to be paying £45+ to head along.
The Vault Festival is currently in progress and has a couple of immersive gaming experiences (in addition to the escape room mentioned above!).
Discounts
Take a look at the main section for details – I published an article earlier in the month with every discount I could find!
That’s all, folks
That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect, then let me know via email or in the comments below; or, equally, if you’re aware of other news, discounts or competitions, tell me and I’ll include updates in the next edition.
Thanks for reading!