Reading, Jan 2026
Over the years the games at Knockout have become steadily slicker and more sophisticated, but remained very much in the tradition of classic escape rooms. With the venue now operated by the team from Deadlocked, the latest game here is an abrupt turn in a much more experimental direction, a puzzle challenge that I suspect may soon be drawing enthusiasts to Reading to test their solving skills.
The Locktopus is set on a spaceship, on which you need to defeat the titular AI’s riddles to escape. The game area is compact but rather sumptuous in its gritty sci-fi stylings, but story and decor are really just backdrop to the main aim, of frantic solving. This game has a unique structure, which is worth describing (with no spoilers). You have eight different paths, where each path is a set of puzzles that are linked by theme or style, but which can mostly be completed in any order. There is also a main sequence of puzzles required both to complete the game, and also to unlock some of the other paths. There are no padlocks; most answers are input via one of the several large touch screens.
This is of course a score-based game, where you solve as much as you can within the time limit. That’s a style that’s become increasingly popular, particularly with enthusiast teams keen to get a full hour’s worth of game, although most such games can sometimes be wholly completed by a fast team working in parallel. That’s not the case with The Locktopus. I can think of only two other UK games that can possibly compare to it in sheer quantity of puzzle content; when you play this, accept from the start that you’re not going to solve everything.
With this tsunami of puzzles, the designers have taken the chance to throw some of the normal escape room assumptions out the window, starting with the single-use rule. Here, the same mechanism may be used to enter multiple codes of the same format; or an item that you’d normally place aside as used may turn out to have further secrets waiting to be discovered.
I found this oddly freeing. If there’s a particular puzzle style you dislike, you can ignore it entirely and have no shortage of others to look at instead. Some coordination is of course needed, but each player can hone in on the parts of the game that they feel drawn to.
I suspect this is a Marmite experience that will be absolute heaven for some players and will feel unsatisfying to those who prefer something more story-driven. That said, I probably count as someone less keen on solve-what-you-can games, and thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless. The sixty minutes of solving passed in a blur, and we’d have happily continued for longer. Even so, it makes me wish the designers would build the AirBnb style of experience where the puzzles are scattered throughout a house, to solve as background entertainment during a multi-day stay; I’d love to do The Locktopus over the course of several hours with no time pressure, to see how many of the secrets we could winkle out of it before admitting defeat.
While this is obviously a game well-tailored to enthusiasts, I imagine it will work well for beginner groups as well – after all, no-one’s going to solve everything in there, whatever their level of experience. And it’s cleverly gated to make sure everyone gets off to a fast start without being overwhelmed by puzzle quantity (something I often struggle with in this style of game). I was impressed by the thought that went into the design throughout, in fact; the core concept of the game might be Marmite, but there are very few quibbles to be had with the execution of that concept.
Reading is now well-established as one of the UK’s foremost escape cities. If there was any danger of that ceasing to be the case after the lamented closure of Time Trap last year, I think that danger has passed – The Locktopus seems destined to be one of the standard must-play rooms on the list of any enthusiast passing this way, as one of several compelling reasons to visit Reading for an escape binge. 
