Riga, Jul 2017
The aim of this escape game is to identify the name and location of a murder culprit from the clues left behind in Sherlock Holmes‘ office, so as to save an innocent friend of yours from imminent judicial execution. Finding that information will also be the key to escaping the room.
Initial impressions were good, with a well themed doorway to enter the room, which is always a nice touch. Inside, the decoration was decent without being stunning.
The puzzles were nicely matched to the Sherlock theme and entirely padlock free, with several clever mechanisms and ideas used to progress. The low point came with a fiddly mechanism where we knew exactly what to do but which was so sensitive that each of the three of us tried it repeatedly without success; eventually the operator came into the room to do it for us, and even then needed a couple of attempts to get it to work as intended. A couple of other frustrations weakened what was otherwise a clever and pleasing design.
221B Baker Street appears to be the same game design as Claustrophobia’s room of the same name in Tallinn, although there’s no reference to this on the company’s website. There were a couple of different puzzles and some differences in presentation/implementation, but the similarities far outweighed the differences, and if you’ve played one it wouldn’t make sense to play the other. Of the two, the one in Tallinn looks better and does not suffer from the gameplay issues we encountered; where there were differences in the puzzles, I generally liked the Find Exit versions less. So I’d advise players to skip this game until they have a chance to play it at Claustrophobia in Tallinn. 
