Escapism Chester: Amphitheatre

Two of my favourite things in escape rooms are historical themes and locally-inspired themes, so a room inspired by Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre sounded right in my wheelhouse.

The actual room, however, was a big disappointment. The decor was all very cheap-looking and made only a very superficial effort to look like the under-arena cells it purported to be. Although I’m not a big fan of unnecessary darkness in escape rooms, I think a bit of flickering-torches-in-the-shadows atmospheric lack-of-lighting would have helped here.

The puzzles were mostly based around very anachronistic padlocks, and there wasn’t much of a story. Probably the biggest disappointment though, came at the end - there wasn’t an obvious ‘you’ve done it!’ moment, and when we opened the door there wasn’t anyone there to meet us. The problem was that the people in the neighbouring room had finished just before us, and there was only one GM between the two rooms.

Having said all that, if you go in expecting a bunch of puzzles without being worried about immersion, then this room is fun enough (the two newbies we had with us certainly enjoyed it).