It’s that time of year when there are both Halloween and Christmas escape rooms opening for booking – and much else besides, including a free LEGO escape room!
🎃 Full list of games tagged for Halloween (not including the many permanent horror rooms available)
🎄 Full list of games tagged for Christmas
Greater London
🔒 LEGO are running a pop-up escape room, The Superpower Academy, for one week only (12th-18th October) in Shoreditch. It’s entirely free and at time of writing there’s still a reasonable number of slots left. It seems to be very kid-friendly but is suitable for „everyone over the age of 6“; „kids, adults, and adults who play like kids“.
🔒 No Escape are running their usual Halloween event, with live actors in their rooms for game at end October.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🔒 AIM Escape (East London): Hotel of Horrors
🔒 Room Lockdown’s various London-based city trails
Southeast England
🔒 TimeQuest announced an entire series of new games, collectively called The Helix Project, with a shared narrative. Part 1 is Lab 42, available from next week; part 2 is The Farm, opening in November; and I believe there’s more to follow.
🔒 TimeTrap in Reading have a new game Otto’s 1901, set in a toy shop, and designed to allow head-to-head competitive play if you like. This will be available over Halloween and over Christmas, in spooky and festive modes respectively.
🔒 Hasting’s newest company Captive Experiences will shortly open their third room, 1940s Heist.
🔒 The Coffin at CTRL ALT ESC has a unique concept: you book for up to 5 players, but each person plays it separately, in turn, as a 10 min solo game.
🔒 Escape Windsor closed Area 51 and replaced it with a different UFO room, Spaced Out.
🎄 Pressure Point in Ashford will be running Christmas game Santa’s Gift from mid Nov.
🎄 The Escape Goat’s seasonal room is Elfy is Missing, from start Nov.
🎄 The Panic Room Gravesend will re-open CSI – Christmas Scene Investigation for the Christmas season.
🔒 Chatham’s Escape Plan LIVE are temporarily reopening two of their previous games, The Séance and The Naughty List, for Halloween and Christmas respectively.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🔒 Major Mind Games (Horsham): The Haunting and The Scruffalous has nicked Christmas!!
🔒 The Lift (Brighton): The Lift Shaft
Southwest England
🎄 The Great Big Escape (Dorchester) will be running Christmas pop-up Saving Santa’s Magic; that’ll open at the start of December.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🎄 Cornwall’s Great Escape Rooms Newlyn (Newlyn): The Christmas Express
🔒 House of Frankenstein (Bath): The Shallows
🔒 Live Escape Salisbury (Salisbury): The Medieval Games
Wales
🔒 Escape Rooms Cardiff updated The Tomb to The Tomb 2: Curse of the Serpent, „rebuilt from the sand up!“.
🔒 Exit60 in Newport also have a new room, pirate theme Redbeard’s Revenge.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🎄 PanIQ Rooms Wales (Porthmadog): Christmas Chaos
West Midlands
New September games from last month’s update:
🔒 007 Escape Games (Wolverhampton): Toy Store
East Midlands
🎄 Break Escape announced a Christmas room at each of their locations: The TwELF Day Of Christmas in Loughborough and Santa’s Christmas ADVENTure in Nottingham, both available from mid Oct.
🎄 Escape Coalville’s Christmas offering is Jasper’s Jingless Christmas, available from end Oct.
🔒 Rushden Escape Rooms (previously ESC Rushden) have a new mobile box game named The Bedtime Teddy Mystery Box. They also have a new game due to open on 14th October, in partnership with Thinking Outside The Box – which might just be [redacted by request].
🔒 Trapp’d are opening Spellbound at their new Chester House location in Wellingborough from some point in October. Note that it’s based on the Salem game they used to run in Leeds, though made more family-friendly. (They also have a 25% off offer this weekend with the code 7THBDAY, valid for all their rooms.)
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🔒 Spy Missions Leicester
East of England
🔒 Cluetopia Ipswich open haunted house game Twilight Manor next week; and at their Harwich branch they’ll be running a Christmas game called Grinch on the Run, from mid Nov.
🔒 In The Jungle, a plane crash leaves you stranded in the jungle; that’s the new room at Escape Rooms Suffolk (Bury St Edmunds).
🔒 Norwich Escape Rooms, who previously ran the Body of Evidence game created by History Mystery, have now replaced it with new game The Neanderthal.
🔒 Sudbury Escape Rooms opened Rob The Bank 2, sequel to one of the Know Escape chain’s best-known games.
🔒 Get Out Wisbech have just launched spooky Halloween room The Haunted House (described as eerie but not terrifying).
🔒 Hourglass Escapes have a Halloween popup version of The Doctor Will See You Now with (I believe) all new puzzles, „designed as a scare experience“ with a live actor.
🔒 The Fate of the Ely Witch is a pop-up game at Oliver Cromwell’s House. It’s running over the Halloween period (but is a puzzle room not a scare experience).
🔒 Ware Escape Rooms opened new game Hunted.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🔒 Jailbreak at St Neots Museum
Northwest England
🔒 Cryptic Escape Rooms Manchester will be running Shattered Dimensions as a Halloween pop-up – rather than the usual Halloween themes, this is a 90 minute time travel story.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🎄 Compendium Escape Rooms (Bury): Bad Elf and the Key to the Sleigh
🎄 Lucardo Rawtenstall (Rawtenstall): Seriously Elfish
🎄 Cluefinders Liverpool (Liverpool): Remy’s Festive Fiasco: The Missing Gift
Yorkshire & the Humber
🔒 Enigma Rooms’s newest branch is in Pontefract, and is now open with Escape From Oz.
🔒 In Scunthorpe, Escape Adventures are operating what used to be the local branch of Enigma Rooms. Ironside is still available, and they’ve opened a new game Mystery at the Circus; there’s a further game under construction at a second address in Ashby.
🔒 Cryptic Escape Rooms Hull opened Haunted, a 90 minute supernatural horror game with a live actor, due to run until the end of November.
Other new September games from last month’s update:
🔒 Stuck in the Riddle (Huddersfield): TestRun
🔒 The Great Escape Game Leeds (Leeds): Necromancer
Northeast England
🔒 Doubly welcome to see a new venue in this part of the country; Northumberland Escape Rooms is from the people behind Pirate Escape in Whitley Bay, and their first room is The Matter of the Hatter.
🎄 Escape Rooms Durham will be running seasonal room The Magic of Christmas from mid Nov.
Scotland
🔒 ShapeShifters is a new cocktail bar in Aberdeen that also promises to offer an escape room called The Resurrectionist, built by the designers of Breakout Games Aberdeen.
Northern Ireland
🔒 Forbidden Quest in Belfast opened their new horror room Time To Float, inspired by Stephen King’s IT.
Play at home
🖥️ Escape Rooms Cheltenham’s previous room The Missing Piece is now available to play as an online Telescape format.
And also…
Coming soon: the Lock & Key Awards! 🏆🙌 More information to follow shortly.
I’ve just come back from the Lego Popup and FYI, it is not an escape room. I’m not sure how it made this list. It’s a cute children’s activity and if you’ve got a kid who is under 10, I bet they’ll enjoy it. But if you are a team of grownup enthusiasts who booked it expecting an escape room (or even something vaguely escape-room adjacent), I think you can safely can cancel your reservation.