Escape Room Torquay: The Riviera Mystery Escape

Escape Room Torquay- The Riviera Murder Mystery Escape

Overview

This was our first visit to Escape Torquay after seeing they had re-located to the high street as we are locals. We decided to take on the Murder Mystery room since the rest of the team were down for a night.

There is a multi story car park 5 minutes walk down the road for easy parking in the centre of Torquay. We were greeted by our game master and we were taken into the actual room for the brief which felt a little strange as we were used to being briefed outside of the rooms we have done. We didn’t really like this approach as you could look into the locks and combinations and around the room whilst the briefing was going on. However, this really didn’t matter as the briefing wasn’t really a briefing. There is no story line regarding a murder, there are no signs in the room to suggest that a murder mystery was about to take place and the briefing was simply, when you unlock the chest the game is over. This was a real damper for us, call us old fashioned but we do like a theme to relate to the room we are about to do and this room had absolutely nothing to do with a murder mystery on the surface. Covid rules had gone by the time of our visit so no need for masks but there was hand sanitiser if we wished to use it.

Room impression

As mentioned above, the first impression of the room was really disappointing, probably the least attractive room we have entered. It was really tired and run down. The furniture looked like it was in need of some love and it was filled with chest of drawers and random posters. Again, there was nothing anywhere to suggest this was a murder mystery room. There was also no clock in the room so we did not know what time we were on so we had to use out phones to see the time, which ruined the immersion of the game.

Puzzles

I will go back to the point yet again, the puzzles along with the room had nothing to do with a murder mystery. The main focus on the room was getting children’s number blocks into cartoon animal boards?! It was so confusing and there was no storyline what so ever to follow. The room did not flow at all, we managed to skip through 3 puzzles by accident due to them being poorly put together. All of the puzzles were either key padlocked or combination locked. At one point, we even managed to accidentally open another locked item with a key already used. We were told afterwards that this should not have happened.

Game Master Clues

The game master could see our progress and we were given a radio to ask for hints. Due to the poorly laid out puzzles and none of them making much sense to us, we had to ask half a dozen times for help. This was our 16th room, so we have a rough idea of how things are supposed to flow and these puzzles just confused us throughout and gave us no enjoyment. The camera set up in the room actually had blind spots so the game master couldn’t actually see all of our progress we had to explain where we were in the puzzles for her to be able to assist us. Again, just another thing for us not to enjoy.

Round Up

Although we escaped, we all agreed afterwards that this was comfortably the poorest room we have done. There was simply nothing to reference a murder mystery. There was no mention of a murder in the brief and none of the puzzles had anything to do with the room ‘theme’ we had booked. The ending was underwhelming, even though we knew it was going to be limp and once again, didn’t reveal anything about a murder or a mystery event. The room has only been open for 4/5 months and yet it was so tired and run down. The drawers were falling apart and you could open things that shouldn’t be able to open. We know this review is a little harsh but we are a little bemused to how the room has good reviews? If you are serious about escape rooms, do not visit here unless some serious work has been done to change pretty much everything. We expressed our experience of the game to the game master after the room and she smiled and said she was glad we enjoyed it? In case you are confused after reading this, we really didn’t.