Escape Room Centre – Body Parts

Escape Room Centre – Body Parts.
Location: Blackpool
Game Date 28/01/2012.
Team: Amy, Ian, Sam & Jamie

THIS GAME HAS NOW CLOSED

Onto our next stop of the day, Blackpool’s Escape Room Centre for their newest game “Body Parts” – due to this being a 4 minimum game we teamed up with Sam & Jamie from “Lock Us Up” to make a decent foursome.

After posting this review, we were in contact with the owners of Escape Room Centre, who have rectified all the problems we had, put into action some staff training and are looking at a permanent solution to the broken puzzle. EXCELLENT response from them, and tackled in an incredibly positive and professional way.

Theme:
“You’re not sure how you ended here. You remember being on a night out and getting offered a drink but then everything just fading out.

You and your friends have woken up in a place you’d heard whispers about, but were never quite sure existed, until now!

This place is where your body parts are removed one by one and sold to the highest bidder on the ‘dark web’.

In a coma state you’ll be kept alive until you have no ‘parts’ left to sell.

When Worldwide bidding ends in an hour the ‘operations’ will begin, can you save yourselves?”

Theming was good, a brightly lit waiting room style affair, that gave off hospital type vibes. There was a fair amount to look at, some stuff that helped, and some that was theming, and yet could have been worked into puzzles. That being said, the room was fairly immersive but not scary (the name makes it sound a little scary!) – the room in the main part is large and well lit.

Game Play:
A linear game (Which became one of the many downfalls of this game) which had plenty of different puzzle types, physical, observation, logic, skill.
The puzzles were logical in themselves but the execution was not up to par.
There were ambiguous answers, and time wasting devices used a lot within this game. With a bit of streamlining and clarity there could be some very good puzzles in this room!
The flow was incredibly stop-start. We headed off to a good start and then hit a brick wall until we came across a puzzle that only 2 people could complete at a time, which lead to 2 of us standing round doing nothing (not a good trait in a 4 player room)
Then again a flurry of busy work until another stall at a point in the game where we were doing the completely wrong thing (and the GH didn’t step in to tell us “no”)
Eventually we made our way into the last stage of the game to be welcomed by a broken puzzle.
Now, normally if something is broken, left open or the like and doesn’t impact the game I won’t mention it (especially if it is dealt with well) but this puzzle was so literally broken it was unusable, and thus we physically couldn’t finish the game.
When we were saying this (numerous times) we were met with radio silence from the game host. This is not a good way to leave problems and left me with an incredibly bitter taste in my mouth.

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen, apparently only when we asked (I have never experienced this at Escape Room Centre before!)

Game Host:
Unfortunately I didn’t get our game hosts name. I feel let down by her game hosting, we didn’t get a full brief before going into the room (hence me going on my previous experience of not asking for hints!) and I feel we were quite “on our own” during the game.

Did we escape?
No, but we never would be able since that major puzzle was broken!

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

I was so, so disappointed in this game, the breaking of a major puzzle and the radio silence from the host. I’ve played 5 other games at Escape Room Centre and each have been very very good and unfortunately Body Parts missed the mark and left me frustrated and upset.