Escape Sheffield – Witchcraft & Wizardry

Escape Sheffield – Witchcraft & Wizardry.
Location: Sheffield
Game Date 14/10/2017.
Team: Amy & Ian

Theme:
“Welcome to the school of witchcraft and wizardry where there has been some funny goings on. In a room full of tricks, puzzles, challenges and spells, you must solve them all to escape. However in order to escape with distinction you must retrieve as many pieces of uniform as you can”

The blurb on the website mentions retrieving uniform, this wasn’t mentioned in our briefing, and I think the story delivered in the brief was better than the story posted on the website! “We had just completed our final exams and as we were heading out we find the door locked! Our real exam is to find our wands, and use magic to solve the puzzles and escape the locked classroom!” – either way, we were no longer muggles!
The room itself was very spacious, one of the bigger rooms we’ve seen. It’s not so big that would make it daunting for a smaller team however.
The decoration was lovely and finished to a high standard, the props all were perfectly fitting to the theme and whilst a few caused a little distraction to us, there were no deliberated red herrings.
The immersion was good, and there are a few opportunities to dress up and really immerse yourself into the setting and story of the room!
There was some lovely uses of hidden tech which just served to elevate the room, the room didn’t rely on tech to be magical!

Game Play:
A fairly linear game. Puzzles were varied with observation, code breaking, math, logic, word and a little bit of physical thrown in (in a very well executed and unique way!)
The puzzles were all well themed and took into account the magical world we were embracing for the hour.
Each puzzle was wonderfully solvable and had love ah-ha moments which led to the room being very enjoyable!
The flow was beautiful, with there being absolutely no sticking points or logic leaps.
The use of tech blended well into the room (save for one point where we found something before we could us it which led to us driving ourselves crazy looking for where the buzzing was coming from!)
A game from “Escape” which is clearly designed by experience, you can see that the room’s designer has created a lot of games previously, and it’s great to see the evolution from some of their earlier games, and skill in how to create a solid game with excellent flow.
A lovely game, which will delight everyone… especially Harry Potter fans as there is a lot of nods and inspiration taken from the series that any fan will appreciate.
I would recommend that enthusiasts take as small a team as they can, newbies… a 4 would be perfect!

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen

Game Host:
Ashleigh was our game host, she was incredibly friendly, and clearly has a spark and passion for game hosting, she delivered a good brief, and ran our game very well, only giving us nudges when we really needed them!

Did we escape?
Yes, in 40 minutes!

Website: http://www.escape-sheffield.co.uk
Price:

Adults £20pp (flat rate)
Under 16 £15pp (flate rate)