Time Race – The Invitation

THIS GAME HAS NOW CLOSED
Time Race – The Invitation.
Location: Bury
Game Date 05/10/2017.
Team: Amy & Ian

Theme:
“Every child from the village of Chattesbury knew the name of Lord Everest Flitterwood. He’s the village’s very own Bogeyman, a monstrous old man who would steal the souls of the mindless and reward the hard working and intelligent. To the adults, he was far more of a hero. A Nobel Prize winning Physicist, who helped to establish the village of Chattesbury. Lord Flitterwood was seldom seen in the village in recent years, adding to the children’s gruesome playground talk of the madman atop the hill.

Despite his lack of day to day presence, every day the villagers would see the lights in The Old Manor atop the hill go on with the sun and off with the moon. As many suns and moons passed, the rumours of misdeeds spread away from the playground and into the minds of the adults of the village. Now in modern years tales would circle of families who went missing atop the hill. But to many these tales were seen as just that…stories.

Now for the first time, Lord Flitterwood has sent a letter to a household in the village.”

The Theming in the room was very good, classy… If a little bare, but this lends itself to the setting, you only make it as far as the reception hall in Lord Flitterwood’s manor home. The room is large (more than large enough for the maximum group size) and finished very well, clean, good lighting and it had a beautiful soundtrack of classical music.
The character of Lord Flitterwood is one of the most complete, in depth characters we have ever “met” in an escape room, HE is in control of the game, you’re at his mercy and throughout the wonderful delivery of letters throughout the game. This character is delivered fully and even outside the room, you know how devious and maniacal he really is!
This gives the game a depth that is not often explored fully within escape rooms, but Time Race does it with ease (albeit a LOT of reading!) This of course means the game is immersive and enjoyable. Getting inside the mind of the lead character is a unique take on an escape game.

Game Play:
A strictly linear game where each puzzle is delivered via a letter from Lord Flitterwick. This made the game quite modular as there was only the ability to work on one puzzle at a time… this can lead to burn out on a puzzle (as we experienced and I completely lost the plot over a maths puzzle, I couldn’t grasp it and got so angry with myself!)
The range of puzzle was good, there was a good selection of maths, logic, word and physical (it is worth noting that there is strobe lighting in this room)
The puzzles all did make sense and were logical, the ah-ha moments were there but it was, in some respects a lot of hard work to arrive at the ah-ha moments.
The creator of the puzzles in Time Race is incredibly clever, and that shows through in the game play, you really have to get onto his wavelength (and IQ level) to solve his puzzles quickly!
The way the puzzles are delivered is very unique, each puzzle coming compartmentalised in its own letter, with all the hints and pointers being composed in the letter (again, incredibly intelligent game design!) and each letter deepening the character of Flitterwick. It’s fun to work out which bits of the letter are important, but I would suggest taking a quick reader on your team as the letters are quite lengthy!
Enthusiasts, I would take at least a 3. Newbies…. I would either take a large group or get a good deal of experience, this is NOT an easy room! It’s very good, but not easy peasy!

Clue System:
Hints were delivered via letters written by Lord Flitterwick himself!

Game Host:
Daniel and Holly were our game hosts and ran our game well, we felt they were maybe feeling their feet with the timing of the game (as it is quite new) but they did deliver hints when we needed them and helped us out immensely!

Did we escape?
No 😦 That damn math puzzle ate our time!

Website: https://timerace.co.uk/
Price:
2 Players £50
3 Players £69
4 Players £88
5 Players £100
6 Players £114