countermeasures8690

Another great room by the Lockup and it was wonderful to see Hovis the corgi all grown up, what a good boy!

Really decent concept, but I'll knock a point off for the fact that it's just one room. The puzzles were super unique though and the entire second half of the experience was one big project involving multiple puzzles bringing together to solve the big finale. 

The owner said they'd recently done a pass on all their rooms to make them a bit snappier and improve immersion and this room had a great finale with some amazing technology.

They also had a "hard mode" bonus objective which we managed to complete which gave us some extra gloating points, this is probably why I rate this room so high, it gave us a great flow of puzzles along with a really difficult challenge to finish on

Highly recommend all The Lockup's rooms, they all feel like crafted projects, this is probably my favourite of theirs 

Half a point added for the owner saying "we replaced the directional padlock with an electronic version because those things suck!"

This one was okay, the host was a bit uninterested, but they probably don't pay her enough so it's not really her fault! Not going to knock off points for it

There was a good flow to the room and a a cool reveal of <spoilers> that took me by suprise

But this is a critical website so we have to talk about the negatives, and as others have pointed out its bland as anything. They tried to make it a bit more immersive with a voice over but it didn't really add to the experience, but theming is hard in an escape room I'd imagine. I'm more about puzzles.

And the puzzles are good, apart from the last puzzle which was a bit of a slog, just having to read through a big wad of information in a dark room, probably should have cut this one and replaced it with something snappier

It was quite fun actually! Just a little bit too much stuff in the room, it would have been nice to have a little more direction inside the room, it was a long time ago though. There was a weird "multiple endings" thing at the end that was poorly explained, I think there was a difficulty selection thing but it didn't make a lot of sense what it actually wanted to do. Neat concept though!

I found afterlife a bit better, the pacing just felt more natural

Wow! This was awesome! We came back as my girlfriend wanted to meet the lil' Corgi Hovis, but we left really satisfied with a well designed room.

The website said this was their middle difficulty room but we found it was on the easier side, but I think that was just because the designer clearly spent a lot of time making sure the puzzles were explained well, so it wasn't difficult to follow the instructions and solve the puzzles, still satisfying!

This was needed because there were a lot of 'out there' designs and unique stuff so clear explanations were required. All in all really good

This is a great room. The puzzles were in the sweet spot of 'figure it out' and getting them complete involved zero frustration.

I remember the room having great flow and pacing to it, and therefore was really fun. This is one of the better escape rooms in Sheffield

A little criticism is that some of the tech was a bit janky and one or two puzzles were a bit too much "find the thing", didnt ruin the experience though

It looks fantastic but as far as puzzles go, it was just okay, there were some interesting puzzles however, as we were split into 3 disparate areas in the room, we only got 1/3 of an escape room (save some finale puzzles, which were okay)

I consider myself good at escape rooms and I was paired up with a big-brain so we solved all the puzzles in our own room within 5 minutes and the far end of the room had a pair of smooth-brains (don't worry, they would say the same :P) who took ages solving their puzzles and needed loads of clues.

As a result, there was a 15 minute period where we were sat in our own area solving zero puzzles, just talking about what our plans were for the rest of the week. This wasn't why we paid £20.

Some of the puzzles required the consolidation of information as a group effort, but it should have been all the puzzles if you're going to split people up.

There was also a competitive aspect involving a copy of the room next door, but it was still turned on and we weren't told it till afterwards and that all the time spent with the device was wasted because it wasn't even a puzzle. Its stuff like this that put me off the corporate escape rooms because they tend to just have a "F it, that'll do" when it comes to the tech in the room not really contributing to the experience. Bad form.

It's quite dull looking, but I care more about engaging, original puzzles and this place has them.

I'd imagine your average group will find the puzzles too difficult as they have a lot of variables to them which then need to be communicated to the other groups, as this is a split start. However I like those kind of puzzles.

The lack of any decoration means my memory of any one puzzle is hazy, but I remember having a good time with the room, so the puzzles must have been engaging.

However, these guys are cheap, when they did this room, they had not raised their prices like everyone else did as a result of the inflation in summer 2022

Absolutely fantastic! Quite low tech and lots of padlocks but that kinda makes sense in a room set on a pirate ship. The owner has clearly put a lot of thought into the theming, we had a conversation and he spoke about dipping even the nuts and bolts of the room in acid in order to make the place look like a dingy vessel! Commitment to immersion.

I'm taking off half a star for having a super difficult puzzle be the first one in the room, which meant we felt a bit deflated once we completed it, but then the pacing improved and we were solving puzzles left and right, the host told us that he thought we weren't going to need the clue he gives to most groups before he closes the door, so, maybe this isn't a problem with most groups.

Everything was properly communicated and (apart from the aforementioned opener), it was quite clear what was the next thing to do next, and how to approach the solution and actually FIGURING stuff out! *chef's kiss*

The puzzles were a little illogical but pretty much made sense once we were given needed clues, the problem was we couldn't actually see the puzzles and they came with incredibly small text to try and read.

Some of the tech was a bit janky and didn't work first time.

They commited a bit of a pet peeve of mine where there are multiple puzzles that are presented inside the room and are on show, but you havent' been given an order in which to input the solution. Imagine you see three different versions of "A = 3, B = 6, C = 1", the solution is BCA (613) but the "BCA" is locked away, so you're trying to solve puzzles with incomplete information. Very frustrating.

This led to us not solving a puzzle for 20 mins, then solving 5 puzzles in 5 minutes because we got into a chain of unlocking the final 10% of the puzzle content to actually reach a solution. Pacing was terrible in this room.

But, it looked and sounded great. So there's that

Don't do this room if you value the "figure it out" aspect of escape rooms. Unfortunately there's only one or two puzzles in the room that actually involve some level of logic and absorption of information to progress. Most puzzles are "come to the puzzle, look at a bunch of tech, mess with the tech to see if anything substantial comes to mind, get a clue from the robot which tells you what the designer had in mind at the time the puzzle was built", so many puzzles had missing information and didn't make sense without a clue.

HOWEVER, as other reviews have pointed out, the room is on another level of immersion and beauty so there's still value for money here. I feel like "badly flawed" is a good description because it didn't have what I value in an escape room, which is puzzles that have enough information to let you figure them out without too many clues.

Not the best escape room we have done but we still had fun and the host was great. This is not the best escape room for newbies, a lot of the solutions were poorly communicated and not communicated well, and some of the tech just didn't work properly.

One puzzle was so faffy which took 10 mins and required no brains to solve, only patience. Puzzles like this really leave bad stains on the experience for me

We had fun but there is better one's in Sheffield.

This room convinced me to create an account just to tell everyone how great it was. Great story, fantastic variety in the puzzles and wonderful flow of the games. You can tell they've put great effort into maintaining the immersion in the room and the puzzles were good head scratches.

The only criticism is that sometimes the "warm white" lighting caused a bit of confusion with the colours on display in the puzzles but that's a VERY small nitpick