Bedford Escape Rooms: Saw Room

There’s a common theme to three of the games I played at Bedford Escape Rooms: all were quite simple in design and appearance, but all were decent and enjoyable. Saw Room was the first of the three, and is designed as horror game – despite an opening that involves blindfolds and restraints, and a few other tricks along the way, the fear level is fairly mild.

I’d describe the decor as clinical, with added gore and graffiti. It’s a sparse layout where it looks like most of the game is visible from the start, but where searching (with and without UV) features quite a bit nonetheless.

A cooperative physical puzzle was definitely my favourite section of this game, nicely designed to work well with anything from two to four people. Another physical task was good but seemed to go on unnecessarily long, particularly since only one person at a time could really tackle it, with the others standing around watching.

With one puzzle that required multiple digits, we shortcut the final digit by trying all options. That’s usually frowned upon both in terms of puzzle design and player etiquette, but in some cases, as here, it seems to me fair enough – where the task involves search or something like a scavenger hunt, its reasonable for the requirement to be to find sufficient answers rather than all of them.

With an escape time of just over 45 minutes, this was by some way the game that took us the longest to complete at the venue. I don’t think that’s because it’s significantly harder; it’s more to do with time spent on a particular couple of steps. If you’re choosing between the three games, the main reason to pick Saw Room is if you like a little gore and frights with your puzzles.