Stockport, Apr 2022
MoviESCAPE’s boast is that for extra realism and immersion, they use items taken from real haunted houses and movie sets as part of their room decor; with the magic school game we played, that was presumably less of the former and more of the latter. They’re located some way outside Stockport itself, which seems to give them the luxury of space: their expansive lobby is an immediate plus, a bar area which would be quite comfortable to spend time in before or after a game.
In this Harry Potter inspired game, your task is to find the name of a certain dragon. First impressions were of a small but pretty room (I especially liked the candles), with a lot of padlocks; though it turned out to be less small than it seemed.
Our team of three rattled through in under forty minutes and had a great time. However, I got the impression it could have been a much more frustrating experience – in particular, the very first step was something that a team could easily get stuck on for quite a while, and it was luck and the sharp eyes of a teammate that got us past it. Since our host also said that they didn’t give hints in the first fifteen minutes of a game, that could have gone very differently. There were also a couple of other points that seemed like potential sticking points, such as the one where we seemed to get a five digit code that actually needed to be used on a four digit padlock.
Although we didn’t take any hints as such, our host chimed in in a way that added to the game, via their themed hint system. The theming almost went too far, risking unintelligibility, but overall was a nice addition; and make me suspect that in practice they might not stick to the ‘no hints early on’ policy if it were interfering with a team’s enjoyment.
So while our game went smoothly, and while I’m not certain how representative that was, I’m not going to penalise it for problems that we didn’t actually encounter. While the “movie set” billing might be over hyping it a little, it was a nice looking wizard adventure with an obvious highlight moment. 