Escape Hunt: Murder in the Artist’s Bedroom

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If only they’d had some theme going inside the room…

Outside the room

Escape Hunt is the biggest escape room venue in London – at the time it was twice the size of anywhere else, and even now it’s bigger than the nine room ClueQuest. Situated near Bank, it’s perfect for people working in the City and unsurprisingly is pretty much permanently full in the evenings.

It’s nestled just off Cornhill in a little warren of passages that seem appropriate for such an activity. Even better, its a floor and a half below ground, with zero phone reception. Throw in a beautiful bathroom (with room for more than one person!) and two separate waiting areas (before and after) and you really start to feel they’re caring about the whole experience, not just the 60 minutes in the room. Professional host, and afterwards a range of Sherlock Holmes clothes and props for you to dress up in ready for a photo (which they print out and give to you while you’re there!). I was impressed!

Background

There’s been a murder in an Artist’s Bedroom, and you have to solve it. That’s pretty much the whole story.

Inside the room

 

Sadly, the inside of the game didn’t match the outside. The puzzles were very slim, and were either painfully simple or not obvious. As ever, it was still enjoyable, but this probably represents a lowlight of my escape game playing career.

Oh, and there was a relatively difficult and badly worded maths problem. To my mind, if you’re in a room and worrying about your sums, then the room has failed. The maths should always be trivial – it’s the puzzle solving I’m there for, not the mental arithmetic.

No “wow” puzzles, and to be honest, very few puzzles I can even remember a couple of months later. Finally, one of my personal bugbears – the host told us to be careful around a particular item in the room, which we were, but at the cost of not finding a clue because we didn’t want to damage it. I’ve come to the conclusion that any escape room which has to wan you to be careful of anything other than a very simple ornament (e.g. an hour glass) is doing something wrong, and doubly so if they then hide a clue in it…

Result

We got out with around 15 minutes to spare, requiring only a single intervention from the host (other than when they told us to look where we’d deliberately not looked based on their advice.

Verdict –

Don’t get me wrong – for first timers, this is still going to be an enjoyable experience, but for anyone who’s tried others, then this will be a let down. Play it if you’re a novice and it’s particularly convenient or if you’re pretty certain you’re going to play lots more in the future!

Eating

A friend chose the restaurant, so it was bit more upmarket than my usual destination. This time we went to the Folly – a very nice restaurant a short walk away, towards the river. I seem to recall some flatbread starters and then Thai curry main course. Very nice!

Detailed Room Ratings

Venue
Host
Wow! factor
Immersiveness
Difficulty

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