Trapped Escape Rooms: The Bletchley Blueprints Are Missing!

Having just played Trapped's other game Templars, we plunged straight into Bletchley Blueprints hoping that the game would flow more smoothly. It proved to be somewhat different in gameplay style and decoration, but broadly shared the same strengths and flaws. Like the other game, it appears to be designed from a philosophy that says frustration is an enjoyable part of the challenge, and that escape rooms should be hard enough that only a very low proportion of teams manage to escape.

As you mi...

September 2023

Overview 

The Blueprints was the final room of the three at Trapped and after the frustration of Templars still fresh in our minds, we weren’t overly looking forward to taking on the hardest room, in the hosts words! The building itself is set on a small industrial estate on the outskirts of Okehampton but is easily found. There is plenty of parking onsite but please be aware, there is no waiting area or anywhere to sit and have refreshments, even a glass of water, so bare that in mind in the summer!

We were taken into a reception area and given the instruction to wait. So we did, for quite a few minutes and we don’t really know when our time started. We were told to listen to the message, which we did and then when one of us on the phone couldn’t hear the message that clearly, we asked for it to played again and we were met with a chunk of sarcasm from the GM telling us to listen, abruptly. 

Room impression

The room design was brilliant, as was all three rooms at Trapped. The owner is passionate about his product and seems to defend it no matter what. It’s a credit to him for designing the rooms and creating 3 very challenging rooms. We were immersed completely in this room and although some of the puzzles took a very long time, we did enjoy it and it was very well decorated during the 20/30’s era. There was good background music in the room for this game but having other local escape room companies being advertised in the room felt a bit strange?

Puzzles

As mentioned in previous reviews, there are no padlocks in any rooms. Dan made it very clear throughout the day at Trapped that we had to follow the clues and do not deviate. Although 2 of the puzzles rook a long time, we actually quite enjoyed this room and got to grips with it quite quickly, compared to Templars anyway. There was quite a bit of searching to do and decoding but as mentioned, 2 puzzles took so long that it was unnecessary. If you made a mistake on any one of them, you had to start again! Luckily we didn’t make a mistake but one of them still took us over 15 minutes to complete. The last puzzle infuriated us beyond belief and it is taking a lot of will power not to ruin the ending of the game on this review as it’s not in our nature to do so but that’s how passionate we feel about it. 

As we have said throughout our reviews of Trapped, our relationship with the host seemed to go downhill the more the day went on. It’s as if our first room success seemed to annoy him and he wanted to prove a point for the next 2 games. Once we did get through the last room, thinking we had completed the game, the GM was waiting for us saying we needed to keep going and was counting down in seconds for us to finish. In no exaggeration, the GM was a complete hindrance and it made no sense why he was there at the end of the game? We were annoyed and at this point, we had enough and just wanted to leave but Dan yet again, wanted to walk us through every little detail that we had missed to show how we could have done better. Do we think that is the normal end of the game? Not at all, and if it is, what would have happened if the GM had another group in another room (like what happened during Templars), would he have been able to do what he did with us? Not at all……

Game Master Clues

Dan stays in character throughout the day and you can’t just pick up the phone and say you are stuck because you will not receive any help for this. You need to state what you are actually stuck on or what you would like. Dan will not give you an easy hint, the clue will be cryptic and it is up to you to work out. There is a phone for you to use and with no clock in the room, you are guessing a bit but Dan is there if you need an idea of how long left you have.

Round Up

The three reviews we have written for Trapped have been extremely difficult to write. They are some of the best designed rooms we have taken on and the puzzles are very challenging, especially with no padlocks! We give Dan a lot of credit for creating a cracking set of rooms. However, we just didn’t get on with him. We never got our team photo sent to us after the day, not even uploaded on his Facebook page to show how we had done throughout the day. It is us being picky but the little details do add up and when there are so many phenomenal hosts locally that we really do get on well with, it just felt strange that Dan wasn’t that welcoming with us. He might have been having a bad day? To summarise, if want to challenge yourself, visit Trapped, 3 great rooms that are the hardest we have done.