Escape From The Room Wallington: Crypt of the Cursed

I felt the whole experience quite frustrating but as its a new venue (with a copy of a room already in Wallington) I feel it can make changes and be a great room.

Firstly, the confirmation email lacks much detail compared to most such as what time they want you to arrive and parking/location, etc.  There are signs everywhere in the car park that it will cost you £10 to park but don't worry, just stick your number plate in the tablet in reception and you are fine.  The booking process does also give you a declaration to sign that is clearly not legal in the UK and needs a solicitor to look over, you really cannot say things like even if you are held negligent we will not hold you responsible!

The briefing was fine and the initial stages of the room fitted the theme quite well.  The room is nicely themed and well built.  There are 2 tasks in the main body of the room that frustrated the hell out of us.  Being an experienced group there are 2 tasks that need some work on the instructions.  They are both the "perspective" tasks and one in particular for Alice is very poorly instructed with the wooden guide, a dent in the wood cannot mean raised as its clearly not raised as its indented?!  There are so many options it can be I think it needs some more signposting to make it a bit more obvious.  We lost sooooo much time to that and really killed the vibe as before then we had been going along really well.  

The clue system fits the theming but its hard to hear what its saying if anyone is making any noise at all so you find yourself keep stopping just in case its a relevant message rather than just the countdown clock.  And most messages we had to ask to be repeated.

Anyway back on the track and we finished the main centerpiece in the main room and then just waited.  To then be told to move something large just felt very out of character with what you are always told (and even in this room briefing too) and it just did'nt gel with everything.  A message from the clue system should'nt be needed as it should be obvious what to do next and it really is'nt.  Then the next part of the game has soooo much potential to be good but its so clunky at the moment.  To have the clue system tell me to undo bolts which are not obvious at all really does'nt work as it just breaks the story completely.  Then the ball task never actually seemed complete and I worked on it for ages even though we then somehow finished the game.  Why does the GM leave me playing with the balls for AGES when I have already somehow done it just shows poor GMing.  We ran over by maybe 5mins which was great that the GM let us finish but for us to run over is totally unheard of so it shows either the room is very very hard or needs some tweeks.

So all in all I would say very very frustrating but its definitely got potential with a few tweeks.  Its only new so hopefully they will take on board feedback and can make it a great room.  I would definitely not recommend it to newbies at the moment but experienced escapers should find it a challenge.