SHOCK: La Santa

With just one day in Madrid to fit in escape rooms, La Santa was top of the list; since it has a minimum team size of three, we were only able to play it at all because the prospect of it tempted our third team member into booking a weekend city break to join us.

This is a supernatural horror theme full of religious imagery, which appears to take inspiration from the movie The Nun. You are emissaries sent from the Vatican to deal with reports of demon possession at the abbey. As with many Spanish escape rooms, there is no out of character interaction with anyone at the venue before, during or after the game – even settling the balance of payment for the game was handled with minimal interruption of immersion.

There are certainly puzzles to solve, but I’d describe La Santa as first and foremost an immersive horror experience, led by the acting, the atmosphere and the effects. These were all of course superb. The sisters went all out in their roles, acting with intense fervour both as innocent victims and as adversaries.

Curiously, I didn’t find it a particularly scary game, despite the inventiveness and sophistication of the scare tactics. With horror movies there’s a rule that it’s always scarier when the monster is hidden and the viewers’ imagination is filling in the blanks, and I think here they show the demon a little too often and a little too early. However good the visual effects and acting, familiarity quickly dulls the fear. It might also have been that in this game there’s no need to run or hide, which also lessens the adrenaline. Or maybe we’re just jaded.

For that reason my favourite section of the game was the more puzzle-driven early section, which combined interesting puzzles with a good level of background apprehension. Thereafter the story and set went from strength to strength but the puzzle content seemed a little thinner, and often interrupted by lighting changes and dramatic sequences.

The set deserves a lot of praise. I’m not a natural horror fan, but far prefer the aesthetic of supernatural horror to the grimy gore that characterises most serial killer games and asylum themes. La Santa manages to build an environment that feels authentically old, that is in places beautiful and macabre. And the acting, which is the heart of the game, goes far being simple jump scares; I found it most effective when it was being unnerving than when it was setting out to terrify us.

There’s plenty of physicality here and you should wear rough clothes if possible and come prepared to move around. Three players turned out to be a bare minimum for the game and I’d recommended four as the ideal number.

For me it didn’t quite deliver on the fear, and the time spent trying to terrify ended up detracting a little from the rest. That said, it’s absolutely first rate in a whole range of ways, even if I admired it more than I was carried away by it. It’s not for the horror-allergic, but if you like terror experiences then this is in the first rank of what you can find anywhere.