Blackpool Dungeon – Escape Room

Blackpool Dungeon – Escape Room.
Location: Blackpool
Game Date: 28/01/2018.
Team: Amy, Ian, Sam & Jamie

Our 4th and final room was The Dungeon’s escape room, on that I was very much in anticipation of (being a huge dungeon fan) It is located within the “Hangman’s Tavern” in the Blackpool Tower, and the first puzzle of the event was actually GETTING into the Tower itself! But, would the Dungeon’s Escape Room live up to the high production values and macabre humour of “The Dungeons”… read on to find out!

Theme:
“You and a maximum of 5 others have been sentenced to hang for Witchcraft and are due to be imprisoned awaiting your final drop. You’ve heard rumours of a secret passage out of the guards quarters, but could it be that easy…?”

Theming was good as we would expect from the dungeon, and immersion was also good, There was nothing placed in the room that wasn’t there for a reason, and this ended up with the decoration being quite simple and unobstructive.
The lighting, however was terrible. I am not one to normally complain about lighting as I don’t struggle too much, but the lighting was dim, and it was all to easy for us all to stand in each other’s light. When trying read stuff that is placed high in the room, or on “old” style paper, this just increases frustration and is fairly headache inducing!
The space started off very small, I wouldn’t like to be in there with 5 other souls, but it soon opened up into an average size room.

Game Play:
A Linear game, which it had to be due to the mechanics, the goal was to get 6 orbs to place into the cauldron to escape. These orbs are delivered each time a puzzle is solved. Puzzles were fair, with the majority being observation and logic based. The answers were clear cut and they WOULD have had lovely ah-ha moments had we not been given a clue at a rate of 1 every 20 seconds.
The flow was good, and we mostly worked together the whole game, there weren’t too many times we “divided and conquered” – this was due to the tight, linear nature of the game.
Whilst the puzzles were good and the solutions mostly logical (there were a couple of logic leaps), The dodgy lighting really impacted on gameplay, it was tricky to see things at times, especially the clues placed high in the room! (Which were critical clues we NEEDED to see) God help anyone shorter than me trying to see those clues.
The game seemed to be over before it begun, partly due to there being a lack of content and partly due to the ridiculous amount of clues we had.
This is most certainly NOT a game designed for enthusiasts, or even casual players. This is a game that is designed as a tourist add on to the Dungeon Experience. But they delivered what we had thought… lovely sets with adequate puzzles.

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen

Game Host:
Our game host didn’t have a name, she was a fellow witch, friendly enough and with good acting skills (I would expect NOTHING less) – now this is where we found a problem, we played at 6pm, when the Dungeon and The Tower were closed for the night, and it was almost like the GH wanted to get home.
There is a fine, FINE line between not enough, just right and TOO MANY clues… we weren’t left to figure ANYTHING out ourselves, as soon as we finished one puzzle we were shoved straight on to the next one, which directly impacted on the sense of exploration in the room, and led us to feel like we were pushed and handheld through the room.

Did we escape?
Yes, in 33 minutes.

Website: https://www.thedungeons.com/blackpool/en/escaperooms
Price:
2 Players £45
3 Players £54
4 Players £60
5 Players £70
6 Players £78