Exit The Room – The Bomb

Exit The Room – The Bomb.
Location: Manchester
Game Date 02/01/2018.
Team: Amy & Ian

Theme:
“Tensions rise to a breaking point during the cold war when a renegade agent gets his hand on a nuclear weapon. His plans are to start the third and final world war. He built his headquarters in a secret bunker, and he is ready to press the button at any moment. You still have a chance to save humanity, but the clock is ticking. Your team’s mission is to make sure the bomb doesn’t go off. But hurry, you only have 60 minutes.”

A fairly nicely decorated room that took us back in time somewhat, to a period deep in the cold war, this gave rise (and reason) for older style furniture and typical cupboards and sideboards. The space was improved upon later in the game upon infiltrating the bunker, where the theming was better, and more immersive. Overall a nicely immersive environment, but nothing that is going to wow or surprise.
The space was clean, well finished, light and airy.
There were chairs to take a seat on if the need arised and suitable exit points around the room (these were mandatory fire exits and once ensconced in the story, they faded into the background)
The room had a good soundtrack, with the 2 areas each having a distinct feel to them, without being overbearing or saturating.

Game Play:
A strictly linear game with no deviation, which was unusual as we haven’t played a game this linear for a long time, it was quite nice to see the straightforward path ahead of us and knowing exactly where we has to go.
Standard escape room puzzles that were mainly logic, observation, codebreaking & maths.
Pleasant solutions to the puzzles meant the ah-ha moments did come but they were just there and not a sparkly or engaging as we would like to see, however this could just be down to the fact that we had seen a lot of the puzzles before in numerous escape rooms.
I feel that the Exit The Room brand may have been one of the first in their original country and are bringing original (and therefore older) game designs over to Manchester.
The flow was good, and our only stalls were down to our own search failures.
I can imagine this to be a fun room for first timers and will give a new team some interesting reveals and a good experience, enthusiasts will enjoy the puzzles and flow, just take a small team!

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a walkie talkie, with a maximum of 5 per game!

Game Host:
Tara was our game host and despite it being her last game of a very busy day she welcomed us with enthusiasm and warmth and delivered a very thorough brief, in the room, which was followed up with a video brief (from American Escape Games) that was a bit weird to watch a briefing video from the same, but different brand! THEN the story video… then it was onto the game, finally!
She ran our game very well, and gave us nudges in the right direction when needed.

Did we escape?
Yes, in 45 minutes (and were the only team to do so that day!)

Website: https://www.exittheroom.co.uk
Price:
2 Players £39
3 Players £54
4 Players £68
5 Players £79
6 Players £89