Featuring three Scottish popups, two psychotic barbers, two carnivals and twenty-eight pasties – here’s your list of new UK escape rooms for July.
Greater London
🎃 Early notice that Screamworks have a Halloween game now open for booking – it’s called Granny, and it sounds like evading an actor may be a significant part of the gameplay.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Room Lockdown Hornchurch (Hornchurch): Medusa’s Secret Passages
Southeast England
🔒 Having opened in Alton earlier this year, Immersion Escape Rooms have now added a third room; Echo is a supernatural spook story.
🔒 On the Isle of Wight, Random Rooms are about to open their latest room The Prison, a prequel to their previous game The Cell.
🔒 At the Panic Room’s Dartford branch, The Witch House opens tomorrow – this is a „meticulously reimagined“ version of one of The Panic Room’s first games.
🔒 Pier Pressure now offer a Brighton-based version of Glitch Hunters, the outdoor city trail by clueQuest.
Last call for:
❗️ Pressure Point Escape Rooms (Ashford): Candyland 1 & 2 (closing 28th September)
❗️ The Panic Room (Gravesend): Enigma (closing 7th September)
Channel Islands
🔒 Guernsey’s MTG Escapes is having a busy summer. They’re opening new room The Mystery of Merlin’s Tower mid-month; they have a new city trail named Painting the Roses Red! available now; and they also have a mobile caravan-based 15 min game called The Show Must Go On, running at St Saviours Community Centre on the 9th.
Last call for:
❗️ MTG Escapes (Guernsey): The Wish Factory (closing 30th August)
Southwest England
🔒 Overnight Escapes is a new venture from the folks behind Dreadlock Escape Rooms, offering an escape experience called The Escape Lodge. That’s based at a lodge in Bodmin Holiday Park, and combines self-catering accommodation with a puzzle challenge involving recovering stolen loot. Stay lengths range from two to four nights, depending how long you want to allow yourselves!
🔒 As escape room names go, I have to hand it to Escape Rooms Cornwall for picking 28 Pasties Later. Their latest is of course a zombie plague story, given a Cornish spin.
🔒 Open from the 9th, Rockstar Studio is an 80s music themed game, the newest design at Escape The Game in Bovey Tracey.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Reynard’s Adventures (Taunton): Eye of the Peacock
Wales
🔒 In Swansea, Breakout Live is about to launch Laughing Lair, a creepy carnival room (not related to a room of the same name you may have played elsewhere).
West Midlands
🔒 Chase The Adventure is a new company just launched in Stone in Staffordshire, and they’re running a werewolf adventure called The Human Wolf.
🔒 After closing their town centre location, Escape Hunt Birmingham seem to be expanding at Resorts World, adding Dracula, Excalibur and Eye of the Sun God.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Redditch: Captain Blackheart’s Curse, Space Break, The Lost Pharaoh
🔒 The Puzzle Room Cannock: Mayhem at the Departure Gate
Last call for:
❗️ Kidderminster Escape Rooms: Rockstar Swan Song, School Daze and The Mystic Temple (closing 28th September)
East of England
🔒 EO Escape Rooms now offer a range of tabletop escape games available to play on-site (and probably also for hire at a later date). Available now are Marooned, Petunia’s Perfect Pineapple, The Curse of Bodie, The Marauder’s Lair, The Mysterious Case of DB Hooper and The Voice of the Ocean, with The Seven Modern Wonders of the World to follow.
🔒 Fubar! is Don’t Get Locked In’s new game, and it’s set in an actual prison van – I’m not certain whether there’s any overlap in game content with the various prison van games offered by other companies past and present.
🔒 Ware Escape Rooms opened Thursday the 12th – The Second Coming, a sequel to their previous similarly named room.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 CryptX (Knapwell): A Fete Worse Than Death
🔒 Mimic Escape (Leighton Buzzard): The Great Train Robbery
Northwest England
🔒 Second entirely new company for this month – Clue Collectors opened their doors in Heywood to the north of Manchester. Carnival Crisis is a carnival theme where you’re saving the circus not escaping from creepy clowns.
🔒 The Armitt is a museum/gallery/library in Ambleside in the Lake District, and they have two tabletop games available to play during your visit: Beatrix Potter’s Missing Paper and The Bridge House Mystery.
🔒 Giuseppe’s Dream is the new game at Blackpool’s The Escape Room Centre, set in a toy shop and based on the story of Pinocchio.
🔒 Breakout Manchester have a new room set in a haunted cemetery, called The Haunting.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Harpurhey: Escape From Alcatraz, Room 13, Space Break, The Lost Pharaoh
🔒 Lucardo Rawtenstall: Wizard’s Chest
Yorkshire & the Humber
🔒 Enigma Rooms Pontefract are about to open their second room, with a less comforting theme than their first: Sweeney Todd is their take on the grisly barber legend. They’ve confirmed this is an entirely new game to the one that was available at their Lincoln branch, and should be fine to play even if you’ve played the other.
🔒 New at Escape Room Scarborough a.k.a. Mr E Rooms is their wild west room, now titled High Noon Saloon.
🔒 The Great Escape Game Leeds replaced Abducted with the sequel Abducted: Chapter Two (also available in Sheffield).
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Escapable (Wakefield): For Sale’m‘
🔒 The Great Escape Game Sheffield: Abducted: Chapter Two
Northeast England
🔒 Long listed on Escape Newcastle’s site as coming soon, their Sweeney Todd room Demon Barber is now open.
Also new, from last month’s update:
🔒 Pirate Escape (Whitley Bay): The Ogre’s Cabin
Scotland
🔒 Running until the 19th August, The Case of the Missing Formula is a 45 min popup room by Aberdeen Science Centre, available as an add-on to normal admission tickets.
🔒 Discovery Point – the museum for the historic ship RRS Discovery in Dundee – also has a 45 min popup escape room. Antarctic Mysteries is running until the 24th August – and is free to play.
🔒 Good things come in threes, and the Bell Pettigrew Museum of Natural History in St Andrews also has a popup room for summer, running until the 15th. This one is The Last Exhibit.
🔒 New at Game Vault in Kilmarnock, The Dream Lab replaces Office Murder Mystery, and has you trapped in a sinister nightmare realm.
🔒 Escape Hunt Glasgow opened a copy of their India-themed room Jewel of India.
Play from home
🖥️ The Escape Game Swansea have an online game called Operation World Pursuit – and it’s free to play (though requires registration with a name and email address).