Escape360

Played this at a pop-up in Windsor before it came to Wokingham.

We start in the office of the Prime Suspect, searching for evidence of where a kidnapped woman is locked up. The room itself was reasonable, we just found that some of the puzzles were illogical (one in particular needed more than one clue for us to solve and it was still "huh?" afterwards. I just can't see how you can get the answer without a lot of nudging and amazing eyesight). One of the hiding places had a lock that fell open when being poked with the wrong key. Another couple of clues required us to search through a big pile of items (I am trying not to give spoilers) which would normally rule them out as just decoration.  In many cases we had codes and had to guess which lock they were supposed to open.

For one of the clues, the GM admitted that it takes teams a long time to solve because it's quite counter intuitive (one of our team got it but it took a while). I can imagine a lot of people get very frustrated with it.

As with the other Escape 360 room, we visited during the July heatwave and the room was airless and boiling. I know the UK can't be fully equipped with air conditioning, we don't expect that, but a couple of cheap fans would have made a huge difference. The GM apologised after saying they used to have fans but they had disappeared (she had one on her desk, though). 

This room is vaguely Harry Potter themed (a few props, four house flags, lightning signs for when to use your wand). 

One puzzle in particular relied on the darkness meaning we couldn't find a puzzle piece (which we didn't think we needed due to the wording of the puzzle so we wasted a lot of time trying to solve it when we technically couldn't).  

 There were quite a few random red herring articles in the room which delayed us quite a bit. 

A couple of clever puzzles involved using the wands, though it was given away by the use of the lightning symbols (explained before the game) which took the edge off a little.

Many of the puzzles seemed quite illogical. One was technically flawed, in that things were in the right place but needed a big of jiggling to make it work.

Worst of all we visited during the July heatwave and the room is airless and boiling. I know the UK can't be fully equipped with air conditioning, we don't expect that, but a couple of cheap fans would have made a huge difference. The GM apologised after saying they used to have fans but they had disappeared (she had one on her desk, though). 

Overall could not really recommend. Glad we didn't do this one last.