Hint Hunt: The Zen Room

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Outside the room

As I soon came to realise, escape rooms are not placed in the most salubrious parts of town. They’re rarely after passing trade, so cheap rent is more important than anything. That said, HintHunt isn’t actually too bad – just round behind Euston.

One thing that HintHunt were guilty of, as are most escape rooms, was that if you turned up even slightly early, you were told to go somewhere else, because there’s almost no waiting room space, and the hosts will still be be busy with the previous players (or resetting the room).

Inside was pretty plain, but comfortable, although the rooms were massively crammed into the space, so for one you had to leave by the front door, then go down the outside stairs to the basement.

Background

I don’t recall much of a background. In fact, I’m not even sure what we were trying to do, other than get out of the room. Perhaps when you’re the first escape room in the city, having to escape is enough of a story!

Inside the room

The room was nicely themed with (as far as I could tell) authentic Japanese looking props. There were a couple of unusual, but cool puzzles, to differentiate them from the (soon to be) competitors, although in general I found that some of the puzzles were not as intuitive as they could have been. I’m a big fan of puzzles where as soon as I know the answer I feel stupid for not getting it quicker, and this didn’t have many of them.

There was plenty to keep you occupied, a good variety of puzzles and the clues were reasonably well timed. The room did feel a little bit tired – it had been around for a while, and had been well exercised (indeed, they were repairing part of it when we arrived!)

Result

We got out with a few minutes to spare. We needed the clues, but it didn’t feel impossible to get to the end without them.

Verdict –

This is a perfectly reasonable escape room, but lacks enough of the “wow” puzzles for me to recommend it to first timers. If it’s a convenient venue, or you’re a fan of escape rooms then fine, but otherwise I’d recommend one of the other London escape rooms.

Eating

Euston has a veritable cornucopia of restaurants, but we opted for one of the Drummond Street establishments for a great Indian.

Detailed Room Ratings

Venue
Host
Wow! factor
Immersiveness
Difficulty

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