Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Southampton: Extinct Revisited

Props held together by gaffer tape, dirty props and floors. I came out of this game really wanting to sanitize my hands.
The game we needed some nudges along the way, it's a large and expansive set - but something just didn't quite work/flow. 
On day one of this game I may be less critical, but there's a lot of care and attention required to bring this back to that level.

Really interesting theme with lots of detail. Interesting story line and the host played her part well.

Great fun playing extinct. We really enjoyed the jump scares and the bonus round. 

Great room. Fantastic theming. Quite a big room too.

Great theme executed well. Not very intuitive. Very linear for a bigger group left people stood around. Props look slightly dated and overused

Once again, issues 2 days in a row with Houdinis which surprises me for how highly rated Houdinis is. Turned up early again due to the email, didn't get spoken to until our exact start time. Fail to understand why put it in the email but never have staff there. 

Anyway, GM was friendly and funny and tried his best to get into the role, I don't envy these guys trying to play a character all the way through but he did well.

The room was amazing, fully immersive, puzzles seemed to fit, the only downside was the failed reset and the skipping of a couple of puzzles. It is perfect for kids despite the website under 14 notice. 

I would fully recommend the room but the overall experience at Houdinis has left me wondering why they are so wildly raved about. 

We visited at the end of July and played Extinct as it was listed as the most difficult room available. As a group we had all played a fair few escape room, so we were eager for the challenge. The host who greeted us was enthusiastic and friendly, and I will give them credit where due for the great dedication they showed remaining in character for the entirety of our room! 

Initially entering our room the set was great with immersive sounds and props- quite dark but this was due to the atmosphere and nature of the room theming. It was a little difficult navigating the space as a group of 4 with only 1 or 2 poor light sources, but I imagine this was to encourage us to work together. I do think the lighting affected the hosts ability to run the room for us though, as on completing a puzzle she had to wait for us to tell her we’d completed it over a radio. We weren’t aware that we had to do this so lost a little time standing around and didn’t get that instant sense of achievement after having solved something.

Without revealing any spoilers, travelling through our escape room we were starting to enjoy completing challenges and puzzles. Whilst the host was clearly very enthusiastic and passionate, it did feel like they were talking a LOT through the radio to us when we just wanted to be left to work through the room ourselves. We had plenty of time left so felt a bit puzzled as to why the games master was giving us so many nudges and talking to us so much. This felt a little frustrating after about 15 mins, especially when we’d be working through a puzzle and would sometimes feel as though we’d been cheated the satisfaction of coming to the correct answer ourselves. By about 20 minutes we’d stopped replying as much on the radio as it felt a bit too overbearing and was completely ruining the immersion of the game.

Whilst the room itself was themed well, it didn’t actually feel like there was that much to do. It felt like a lot of the game was padded out with films or audio and without this aspect- and interruptions from our games master- I feel that our team would have completed it in probably just under half an hour. Not a time that reflects the difficulty the room is rated at.

Firstly, we turned up 15 mins prior, as per the email, not a sign of anyone. We called the number on the desk, no response. We went up to the people running the bowling who said they haven't seen anyone from the escape rooms today. We waited a bit more and phoned again, to get a response from another of their locations saying to wait and if no one turns up then to call them again. Finally someone showed up and got us to sign in, no apology or anything, and just danced around to the music whilst we were trying to sign in on half working iPad. We eventually got into the game about 10-15 minutes after our booked start time.

The game:  Unhappy with our GM for this game. Her intro was appalling, then for the first 30ish minutes of the game she just radioed through telling us how to do everything. We weren't even getting a chance to figure anything out for ourselves. We had said before entering we were an experienced team so i thought, oh we must be getting this many clues because its a room with 16% escape rate and its part of it, maybe there's loads more stuff to do. But no, there wasn't, we didn't need the help. It got to the point where i just stopped replying on the walkie when she asked us to explain what we were doing as she couldn't see, she got the hint eventually that we didn't want help, but my god it ruined the whole room for us. then in the debrief she literally got out her phone and read us a bunch of discount codes from their website. No idea what that was about, it almost felt like she was being forced to be there and had a gun to the back of her head.

The game itself maybe was ok, but i have no idea since we weren't really given the chance to even try half the puzzles

Excellent game we did for daughters birthday.  Ash was excellent host.  Only issue was very warm in there.  Needed a fan or through draft

FANTASTIC. Big shout out to Leon who made the experience from beginning to end!

We have done Titanic and Escape from Alcatraz (this is my favourite Houdinis one) before and were really looking forward to this one but sadly it fell well short of the games we have played so far in 2022.  It all just felt very tired and 2nd hand.  There was an issue with the bonnet of the jeep, the only dinosaur in the game was broken, the games in reception were missing parts and armchairs have seen better days, and in the game itself we were given 3 torches for a group of 4 but only 2 worked.  I mentioned it was so dark and they said they couldnt charge the torches overnight so always had issues with them.  Maybe invest in a 2nd set of batteries and charge them alternate days then as its rubbish playing a room thats dark without any proper lights!  I felt I missed most of the first room as I didnt have a working torch at that point.

We didnt feel the puzzles worked very well, they were pretty convoluted, mostly of a very similar style and some of the links seemed very tenuous.  It was mediocre but doesnt make me want to rush back to the franchise again Im afraid.

This was great fun - loved the set and the puzzles, plenty to do and suitable for getting younger children involved. 

Extinct is a beautiful game. It's very immersive with a fantastic set. There are some great dramatic moments which build tension, although i'd never say it veers off into the realm of being scary. It's just a shame that I felt the puzzles weren't as strong as they could've been. There were some great puzzles in there, but I felt there was an over-reliance on reading based puzzles. After a while I felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer volume of text one had to rummage through to find solutions. Obviously, some people might be drawn towards this type of puzzle so I can't fault it entirely. Overall it's a fun game, but a little bit more variety in the puzzles would've been appreciated. 

Overall a good, fun room. Slightly spoiled by some of the physical access issues and the overpowering smell of rubber from all the props. 

This is great room with a fab, immersive theme, like all of Houdini's games. The decor and set dressing is brilliant, especially if you're a dinosaur or Jurassic Park fan.

The puzzles too are great - challenging and inventive, and fitted with the theme.

My only minor quibble was that some of the sound wasn't as clear as it could be, which meant we wasted time listening to instructions several times. (We also lost 2 mins on our time at the end because we'd achieved the primary objective but missed a minor step to be let out, which was frustrating - wish the GM had intervened!).

Overall a great room though, would recommend to anyone who loves a well themed experience.

My favourite of the Houdini's rooms. The set was amazing, the puzzles were fantastic and the GM was one of the best. Love this room.