Escape Reading: Ram Raid

A very nice game. Lots of puzzles. Built up towards the end really well too.

Amazing room with so much inside, the best I’ve ever played for sure and certainly deserving of all those awards. Everything is so clever and well designed, the room is fully immersive and always throws something new at you. Hosting also great from the get-go!

I really shouldn't rate this as highly as I do, it's so hard to compare escape rooms and I often wonder whether I should be scoring on gameplay, immersion, theme/decor, hosting or more.

As soon as you enter the room you feel like you're in a bank. It's not other worldly exciting but impressively realistic. From that point onwards there are a lot of things that break immersion, notes from the gamemaster telling you to be careful not to break things, clues that are clearly puzzles and not in theme. And that should make it not a top tier escape room......

But it doesn't. It's a puzzle lovers dream. You know you are in a game and it feels like it. Puzzles are being thrown at you left right and centre, every type of puzzle you can imagine is included. A live scoreboard keeps the adrenaline running and when you think you are getting near the end you realise it's really only the start. The puzzles are non linear so groups can split but there are plenty of puzzles that need more than one person and constant communication is key. There is so much detail that you miss at first glance but all puzzles are so well signposted and no need for logic leaps, we needed 2 clues but they were both us being silly rather than a confusing puzzle.

We loved it from start to finish and my son (7 and on his 18th room) hasn't stopped talking about it since. It has instantly gone into out top 3 of over 25 rooms (number 1 for our son)

The king of point scoring Heist Games is probably still Daylight Robbery in Nottingham but don't discount this game at all as it features a diverse set of puzzles as you commit your robbery but there's a couple of set piece moments that make it stand out.  Some pieces of the set design are also outstanding and really make this game stand out.  Recommended if you like your puzzle-fest scoring kind of games.

We enjoyed this room and some of it was definitely novel and fun but missed the satisfaction of the traditional padlock style puzzles

We were so excited to play RamRaid after hearing some great things and it didn’t disappoint. We managed to loot the lot with time to spare and enjoyed every second. Excellent hosting by Thomas too! Highly recommended

Team of two, completed the harder version and escaped with £925,000!  Such a good room, great hosting! 

Frantic and SO. MUCH. FUN. This room was (forgive the pun) rammed with puzzles - you have to work fast! Very realistic environment with high production value which felt very immersive. It's time-restricted but you could also leave at any point based on a kind of 'points' system (won't spoil what the points are). Got out with the maximum 'points' by the skin of our teeth. 

Great sense of urgency throughout the game as this is a collect as much as you can within the time kind of game. I really liked how there was a greater sense of structure within this game in comparison to others with a similar style.

As with all Escape Reading games, the puzzles are incredibly inventive and use the theming within them perfectly. I also really like how the game begins and ends with the van, completing the story appropriately. 

This room went straight to my number one! It's incredibly fast paced, enjoyable and just over all incredible.

I highly recommend this room! 

Fab room, the staging is really excellent and well thought out, the atmospheric music was just right as well! Can't wait to try some more rooms at this venue!

This is such a fun room and a different take on the 'smash and grab' idea that really gets your heart racing, particularly during the end section, which breaks away from being linear and becomes a go-for-it bonanza of puzzle-solving. We particularly liked this end section but the game is great throughout, with some clever tech and on-theme puzzles.

We managed to get the million with time to spare as a two, which is no mean feat but definitely do-able if you work quickly. Saying that, there is a point where it would be easy to get held up so some additional team members would be an advantage.

A top game that was bags of fun.

Excellent room which has a clever mechanism so the game isn't a simple pass/fail.

This room is in my top 3 UK rooms (out of 50 or so i've completed). It's a must-do! 

Fantastic room. Loved the theming and the puzzles. All worked very well. Would encourage all to seek out this room. 

Blooming brilliant game. The set is incredible, totally immersive. The safe itself is really impressive - the effort they have gone to to recreate it is really top notch. 

The music is brilliant - all really well picked tunes with the tempo and style ramping up as time goes on. Our GM was a huge amount of fun, too, really playing his character as well. 

Genuinely loved this game, it was so much fun with some clever puzzles. This is one of those rooms that when you come out you are totally buzzing.

We had read reviews of the room and it didn't disappoint!! Great immersion including theme and soundtrack. With only 2 players, there was a lot to do but, because we could divide and conquer, we managed to get the full £1000000. GM Tom was great, sending hints when needed but still making us do the hard work.

Loved this room. Totally immersive and a real adrenaline rush.

A fun take on the 'collect as much as you can' type of escape room, meaning you can keep going till the very end. The heist theme was definitely implemented better than other similar ones we'd done elsewhere.

Challenging as a two, because at points you could easily have 4 people working on different puzzles, so we were stretched at times. Having said that the GM helped chivvy us along so that we were able to keep on track, and we were pleased to have solved all but one 'extra' puzzle.

The puzzles were fairly unique, clever and robust. We liked the soundtrack that matched the momentum and intensity too, and clever hint systems. There were other little touches that made it good fun (which I won't say any more on as I don't want to spoil it for others!)

This is a very enjoyable room with a variable difficulty setting ensuring that even with experience there is plenty to fill your time (we escaped with £900,000/no clues). Had some genuine adrenaline later on in the game and definitely a buzz from the finish - some great ideas in this game, and had a lovely GM host us who was clearly passionate about playing ERs as well. 

Escape Reading have been around for a few years now, and have recently refurbished their original location (on the Oxford Road, near Tesco) with a very fresh look, and a brand new room to explore.

Entering the site, it was almost shocking how much it had changed - gone was the old-style "we've stuck a couple of rooms in a rented space above a welders", and the whole place has been repainted, reorganised, flashy lights and (I appreciate this sounds silly) charging cables for your phones inside the lockboxes for escapees.  Our host (Jacob) gave us a well-themed brief that we were off to rob a bank for convoluted reasons, and off we went, through the door, and... Wow.  Avoiding spoilers here, but the themeing was utterly on point, huge amounts of custom work that's been put in (including a number of utterly massive props that fit amazingly, and custom branding throughout), and it really did feel like a legitimate bank.

For the puzzles, they all drew off the theme well, and were challenging without being obtuse.  The tech level was great, with maglocks galore and some very nice custom computer work.  The robbery escalates throughout, with a finale that reminded me somewhat of a boss rush in Megaman, causing absolute chaos for our reasonably experienced (2 of us with >30 rooms, 2 with 5-10) team.  Throughout the room, we didn't feel like we got stuck at all (barring us missing a really obvious sign, that we had to be prompted on!), and the pacing and puzzles kept all 4 of us busy for the duration.  For less experienced teams, the room does come with a mechanic allowing for partial completion of the room, which in context makes a lot of sense.

Escape Reading have been pushing further and further with each room they release, and this room has really tipped the scales, putting it in my top 5 rooms (alongside both of CoDecode's rooms (Swindon), Time Trap's Station X (Reading) and Cryptology's First Contact (Sheffield)).  We're super-excited about what they bring next (with their magic-themed room coming "soon")!

Absolutely fantastic room - excellent attention to detail/chunky props that certainly add to the experience.

Very good use of varying win condition (collect as much money from bank as you c an!)