Escape Room Centre – Grimoire in the Attic

Escape Room Centre – Grimoire in the Attic.
Location: Blackpool
Game Date 17/07/2017.
Team: Amy & Ian

Theme:
“An ancient book of spells, The Grimoire, has been stolen. You’ve traced those responsible to this long forgotten abandoned mansion

Their plan is to use the book to invoke evil spIrits of the past to rise again and destroy mankind. Time is short; the ceremony will begin tonight, at the stroke of midnight.

It’s just before 11pm, giving you one hour to find the Grimoire and escape. You have searched everywhere and found nothing, there is only one place left to look, the attic…”

This story & theme really spoke to me, I love anything witchy and occult… The theming was really good in the room, it was actually IN the attic too, making great use of the space within it. The room is a little bit dim, but this is perfectly in theme with the room, creating the right atmosphere and not just for “increasing difficulty” (You are provided with torches!)
The immersion was great, the attic really felt abandoned and was a little creepy! This was aided by a soundtrack that set the mood and added to the ambience. The room had enough props and decoration to compliment the theme, but not so much that there was a chance of creating red herrings.
A lovely designed and finished room, and further more… this is Escape Room Centre’s first foray into creating their own games (They brought the other games in from TRAP in Hungary) how does the game play match up… read on to find out!

Game Play:
A room that begins open, and becomes more linear as the game progresses, with well designed puzzles. Puzzle types were a mix of observation, logic & maths, with a little searching thrown in.
The searching element was tricky for our team (as we’re only a 2 and both lacking searching skills… any tips on how to improve on a postcard PLEASE!) but is perfectly pitched for a bigger team, as there was enough searching to keep all team members occupied until all pieces of the puzzle were found!
The game flowed wonderfully, it’s clear that the creators put a LOT of thought into game flow, as we couldn’t fault it. Again, the only time we slowed was when WE were missing something.
Each puzzle was a joy to complete, and each had a lovely ah-ha moment. There were 2 standout puzzles for me, one for it’s omnipresence from the very start of the game… it’s there, looming… beckoning you to come play and when you get to it, it’s really fun puzzle that is executed seamlessly. The other puzzle was one that encouraged team work, observation and attention to detail, whilst not entirely unique or taxing, it was a great puzzle to understand, work out and solve!
All in all, this is a very good room, Enthusiasts, I would take a team of 3 (in fact, we did say we could have done with our part-time team mate Michael with us for this one… but alas he’s in America!) just to take the workload of searching down a bit. Newbies… at LEAST 4. The room is jam packed with puzzles!

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen.

Game Host:
Christina & John were our game hosts, they’re both so lovely to talk to and hosted our game really well.

Did we escape?
Yes, but we took about 57 minutes! 😮

Website: http://www.escaperoomcentre.com
Price:
2 Players £44
3 Players £63
4 Players £76
5 Players £85
6 Players £90