How Escape rooms get so many great reviews

A Story sets the scene for how a room should feel and conveys why the group is present. If a story is not compelling, players will not invest in achieving the objective.

We’re big believers that the spaces where escape rooms take place should be interesting by themselves. If an escape room takes place in an office, it is an everyday space that people are familiar with, so the appeal of being in that space is minimal. A good escape room will be thinking about how the room you enter is lit, how it feels and even smells. The audio can also do a great job setting the scene that guests find themselves in and building that overall immersion.

Building an unfair escape room to waste 60 minutes is easy. Removing a door handle and leaving you for an hour would waste 60 minutes, but that’s not what it’s about. Instead, we need to select an array of puzzles that showcase intuitive design so that players can determine what they need to do but possess enough challenge to satisfy their completion. Ideally, this will involve multiple team members to ensure that it feels like a team success rather than an individual’s.

You only get one chance to play a room, and everything needs to be perfect. We train our game hosts to think of a reset like pages in a book. Every game item or clue must be in absolutely the correct place, or the story will not work. This is also true of items working in a room. A puzzle not working, in our opinion, should lead to the room being closed until it is resolved. Waiting for an override for something not triggering properly is not a fair experience, or simply skipping a puzzle entirely is not acceptable. Not every escape room feels the same way about this.

We aim to have all groups finish our rooms. We strive to ensure that groups complete the stories they participate in so that everyone can leave with a feeling of success. Some Escape rooms, instead, choose to offer discounts for groups to try again. We don’t think this is fair, and whilst there may be some business benefit for repeat transactions, we feel the risk of that sense of failure may lead to the group abandoning escape rooms entirely. We’re not an examination board; we’re here for groups to share experiences together. We have dedicated game hosts to welcome the group, understand their knowledge, and ensure that hints align with exactly what the team has been working on.

The average person is estimated to take 1,000 digital photos per year. Call us old-fashioned, but we value printed photos and include a complimentary print for every group. For us, it’s a personalised visual prompt that groups can treasure and reflect on the shared experience they’ve participated in.

We include a card and sweets for celebration events that share their special occasions with us. We don’t charge any extra for this. As a result, we have handed out over 4,500 bags of Haribo (as of 03.25). Even the choice of Haribo was specific: it was a non-dairy, non-gluten choice with a vegetarian Strawbs option. We also have Skittles as a backup as a Vegan and Halal option.

We believe that Escape rooms are a one-time experience, and as a result, we want to make it as memorable as possible. This may include the game host dressing up to set the scene, sharing some fun with your team, or spending time answering any questions both before and after your session. We want to make that experience as memorable as possible and stagger our session times to ensure you will avoid hearing a room next door operating. We also allow our hosts between 45 minutes to an hour between sessions to ensure that the game host has time to prepare for your session properly and to avoid your group feeling like they are being rushed out the door.