essentialatom

Although I gave Guardians of the Gallery half a star more, reflecting the originality of its design and the amount of work that had clearly gone into it, this was the room I enjoyed more. It's simple, charming and fun, with a variety of challenges, some witty, some mathematical, some physically engaging. I think kids would like this room. They'd enjoy the physical elements and the bit with the glasses, and I imagine that they wouldn't require more than some light hand-holding to solve most of the puzzles. 

Any escape room enthusiast will know that rooms often feature secret doors that open up hidden areas - this room uses a clever trick to add a further surprise to that idea. One of the puzzles was a real irritant, the method being clear but the execution a pain (if you want us to count things, please don't make them so hard to see!), but the rest were smart and had plenty of variety, and there's a ton to do. A shame the room's closing, but I'm glad we caught it before it does. 

A lovely set with some enjoyable physical interactivity, but one puzzle that we felt had equally plausible alternative solutions with nothing indicating that they weren't correct, and a couple of puzzles that were essentially the same. A bit disappointing. 

A fun space to explore (and cramped at points, which was fun for a pair, but if your team is more than two or three people god knows how you'd find it). The puzzles were fair and when we missed details they were entirely our fault. The room's reputation probably doesn't do it any favours - it set an expectation that wasn't quite met - but I recommend it. 

Puzzle one in this room is to find the puzzles. Often an escape room overloads you with things to investigate right away; here you're shown into a brightly-lit, minimalist room made of white walls and nothing more, and told to get going. (Well, admittedly, you are told a bit more than that, and arguably the less you're told the better the experience would be, but you know what I mean.) It's a great and original introduction to the experience (I've played other rooms that give you little or nothing to begin with, but they're typically set in darkness with your first priority finding a way of supplying yourself with light). Of course, it doesn't take long to get a handle on what you need to be doing, and you're presented with a pleasing variety of puzzles to solve here. They're all clever, they all make good sense, and they're all satisfying to solve, rewarding observation and communication. Recommended. 

A note on the theming: this game might be called The Asylum and ostensibly themed as such, but really the theme here is about light and darkness. It's striking how the room is flooded with light from the beginning, but it also distinguishes the room's regions and plays a meaningful role in the design of at least a couple of the puzzles. I've played plenty of exquisitely themed rooms, but only in the most obvious sense that the tomb feels truly ancient, the murder house is deeply terrifying and so on. The theming here is different to that and I hope it's as intentional as I think it is because it feels thought-through and very original, but it's true that it's not explicit - it's only as I write this review that it occurs to me. Regardless, intended or not, it has a strong visual impact and I'm sure it'll be memorable in the long run. 

I have to start by shouting out James, our host, whose sense of humour and refusal to break character not only set a great tone for our game... but also saw us through an unfortunate power cut that occurred during our third or fourth puzzle! These things happen and it's nobody's fault, and he and another member of staff got us back up and running with little delay, but he deserves all the praise going for the chirpy irony with which he handled it. He also gave us a detailed debrief after the game, which might not be for everyone, but was up our street. Big up James.

The game itself is terrific fun. Experienced players will have seen most of the puzzles before in some form or other but there's a nice variety of them and they aren't trivial, you do need to pay attention. But gradually the intensity of the game increases and, while it isn't as physically demanding as Atlantis, it begins to ask more of you than just puzzle-solving skills. An immense amount of work has gone into making this room and while I won't go into detail, the finale is incredibly good fun and unlike any game you're likely to have played before. Enormously recommended. 

Most escape room websites tell you how difficult their games are. This one tells you how physical it is, and I was wrong to ignore that. And if this game is 4/5, as the website claims, then I shudder to think what a 5/5 is. There's crawling, climbing, straddling, running around - brilliant fun and, combined with the mental challenges, very Crystal Mazey, but a bit of a shock when you book games based only on the star ratings here and don't pay attention to any details!

The room is unbelievably good-looking and well-built, too. You won't worry that it can't cope with all the physical interaction it demands of you, it's solid and sturdy, and beautifully lit to sell its setting. The production values are among the best I've experienced, it's such a joy to be there, even while you're cramped and crawling and sweaty. 

As fun and unusual as it was to be so physically involved, there were one or two details I think could be improved. Despite the lighting creating a marvellous atmosphere, there's a point at which it could make one puzzle not only more legible but easier to spot in the first place. And part of the solution to another puzzle required a small assumption that we didn't feel was logically justified or meaningfully clued, which was dissatisfying. But take that criticism with a pinch of salt - maybe I'm only making it because we were held up on that puzzle for so long.

These are relatively minor niggles I had with an overall great room that offers something a little different to what you'd typically expect. 

Sadly, this game arguably misses opportunities that its setting in a genuine former jail offers, with furniture and props mostly unrelated to the space, and fairly routine puzzles (although that isn't to say that we weren't stuck at times). Where codes are required for locks, for instance, it's more fun to have to work out the combination than it is simply to be given it upon completion of an otherwise unrelated puzzle; there's a little too much of the latter here. If this game had been built in an industrial unit or repurposed office space, as is common for escape rooms, you'd find nothing remarkable about it. 

The room does make good use of its setting in one way: with the game set across several cells, there's a cute cluing system that allows the host to tell you that you're in the wrong cell for the puzzle you're working on. They can also give you more specific clues, as is typical, but as a player it was nice to be nudged away from irrelevant areas and given the chance to figure out what I needed to be focusing on, before being given more explicit clues. 

A very nicely designed room. There's a satisfying flow from one puzzle to another, some nice attention to detail (such as a communication device being provided for you at just the point you'll need it), and tasks that engage you both physically and mentally. And our host got involved to ramp up the intensity towards the end too! Great fun, highly recommended. 

I always like a heist room, as they encourage you to make the most of your time instead of escape as quickly as possible, and make the most of our time we certainly did. One puzzle was genuinely unfair - it involves using a function of an item that you're not told that it has - but the rest were clever, inventive, and satisfying. Hopefully that one puzzle will be altered, but with that caveat, a terrific room. 

A nice start that splits your team in two, forcing you to communicate, and an intense rush to the finish. If only the music had been quieter - it made it so hard to concentrate. Turning the volume down would have been worth half a star! 

One of the escape rooms everybody tells you you have to play, and understandably so. A fabulously immersive setting and wide variety of puzzles, giving each of our team of four a chance to contribute. Unsurprisingly, we recommend it unreservedly. 

A good variety of clever and satisfying puzzles, with a well-integrated method of delivering hints in the DAVE character. The intro speech did drag on a bit - as dedicated (and deeply, deeply in character) as our host was, it could have stood to have been rather shorter! But once we got into the room, we had a fantastic time. 

Immersive, original nightclub setting, with ridiculously enthusiastic hosting and good use of space and tech. 

Great fun to run around this creepy carnival setting and try not to upset the ghosts. Good theming and some clever puzzle design. Plump for the live actor! 

Great theming and use of space - it's a little claustrophobic, but you're supposed to be on a submarine, it fits. Reasonably satisfying puzzles, some of which have Crystal Maze-like physical components. But a word of advice - have at least three people in your team! Our team of two struggled badly with a couple of puzzles that are just too demanding, and we needed help from the GM. We had the solutions, but they weren't possible to execute between two people. 

Nice scene setting and tech, but some unsatisfying puzzles, some of which required imaginative or logical leaps that felt unwarranted, or which were along the lines of "notice a thing and copy it somewhere else". A shame because the whole setup was promising and entertainingly creepy. 

A lovely heist game that has you solving a set of puzzles to crack into safe deposit boxes for gold bars. As with the other rooms here, economical set design and decor that isn't overloaded with detail - but you'll find yourself running all over the place to investigate it. Really good fun. I can imagine with a larger group it would be total chaos too. 

Lots to do and a wide variety of puzzle types in this room. Love the use of a glass wall to tease you about things you can't access. 

Loads to do and some extremely clever puzzles, some damn near impossible to get but none unfair. As with most collection rooms, frustrating when you finish and find out what you missed, but thoroughly enjoyable and you'll fill an hour in there easily. 

A satisfying, efficient room with some clever puzzles, tech that works well, and plenty to do in quite a concise area. 

A delightful place to be, in a garden full of gnomes and a talking dog. Loads of puzzles of many different types, with some really lovely physical components, things to move and play with. Kids would love this room. 

An unusual and effective setting inside a rock star's dressing room, trying to figure out where he's gone before he's due to go on stage. A wide range of puzzles including one or two concepts I hadn't seen before, and a nice story to follow throughout. Recommended! 

Good setting as I'm used to from Clue HQ. The puzzles are to some extent on the simple side, or at least they're unlikely to engage the lateral thinking of an experienced team, but there are a lot of them to work through and I think it would be a good room for beginners. 

Terrific, immersive set design and great use made of a small space. 

A couple of puzzles might be unintuitive if you're not mathematically inclined. Fortunately, I was, and enjoyed getting stuck into them. The room as a whole is an immersive place to be, and the tech it employs works well and makes for a satisfying experience. Might be a bit of a squeeze for larger groups, but it suited my team of two perfectly. 

Great use of space and technology, and just lovely to play a very high quality room that doesn't muck about and has plenty of nice puzzles. Similar feeling to Hellavator in Birmingham, but without the horror. 

Clever puzzles that make you proud of yourself for figuring out, and excellent use of technology to make everything work. 

The good parts: Good build quality and nice visual design. It sells the Mayan, Indiana Jones feel nicely. And a couple of puzzles were decent and imaginative.

The bad parts: While the room is themed nicely, the puzzles are kind of assorted, not as integrated into the theming as they could be, and mostly don't require much insight to solve. Two puzzles in particular really did our heads in. One could use subtly better cluing in order to give you the push in the right direction - I'm not saying it's impossible to make the leap you need to without that, but what you were supposed to notice was pretty slight. The other was easy to work out, but because the technology involved is either glitchy or far too hard to activate, we were left wandering around for some five to ten minutes wondering what else could have been involved. Eventually a hint confirmed that we were right but the tech was a nightmare, and we were able to move forwards. 

A couple of torches we were given were lovely to have - nothing worse than an unnecessarily dark room, and it's fun to have torches to play with. Sadly one of them was underpowered to the point of uselessness, and the other kept turning itself off for apparently no reason. Perhaps it was low on battery? Either way, it was a big frustration, and our vocal complaints were met by silence. You get the feeling that the reason they ask you to do a silly pose to ask for hints is because they're not paying you any attention otherwise. 

There's potential here, because the room has real plus points. But it could use some significant finessing to say the least, as could the hosting. 

This room was new when we played it and we were determined to get the highest score available, top the leaderboard, and ruin the dreams of all children yet to play it. And we did. Great fun and I think kids would love this room. 

We suffered tech problems with this game in addition to a long wait for it to start, and we weren't crazy about the game design either. A shame because the other games at ClueHQ Birmingham have been great. But these things happen and we were offered a free game to make up for it. 

Got mega stuck on pretty much the first puzzle of the game, but things went fairly smoothly after that. 

Creative puzzles and a lovely endgame. 

Loads to do! 

Not a great experience, unfortunately, with one physical puzzle that was so fiddly to complete that the GM essentially let us give up on it after ten minutes of having known what the solution was with no success in executing it. Some of the other puzzles are also on the tedious side, but it's not a room devoid of enjoyment, as the production values are decent and there's a variety of things to play with, lots more than just locks and keys. Might make a reasonable room for beginners and people with young children. If they make the fiddly puzzle a bit less fiddly. 

Very scary and immersive! Not too tricky although the GM did tell us we'd had little trouble considering how scared we were. Had no real trouble with any puzzles, we just refused to execute solutions once we'd worked them out because we knew something scary would happen once we did