Xscape Now – Houdini’s Mysterium
Location: Telford
Game Date: 25/08/2018
Team: Amy & Ian
Theme:
“It seemed like it would be fun.
The local museum was putting on a Houdini exhibition and had invited a magician to demonstrate some of Houdini’s magic and escapology. They promised that you’d learn how to escape.
There was certainly plenty of Houdini’s props around – chains, crates and milk cans. But from the moment you met him, something about Corbin the magician didn’t seem right. He was shifty and kept saying that there would be no escape tonight.
Then he was gone; disappeared into the ether, leaving you trapped.
Can you summon the spirit of Houdini to aid your escape?”
Theming was lovely, with the museum setting creating an immersive, and reflective space. There was plenty of seating around to take the weight off and the pictures adorning the walls all gave insight into Harry Houdini himself and helped aid the immersion.
The game was large and well lit, and finished to a high standard and this continued throughout the game.
Game Play:
Naturally, in a game concerning Harry Houdini, one expects to be handcuffed for a small amout of the game… let it be said that by PERSONAL preference, we are not fans of handcuffs as they tend to hurt a fair bit – so this became a problem as we missed a key search and were in the cuffs for the entire hour.
The game was quite linear in nature and had several different puzzle types, word, decoding, observation, maths, logic, and codebreaking.
The puzzles were good, and sound in their excecution and some fitted well with the Houdini theme. It felt that a couple of puzzles were thrown in by NERD as time sinks, and granted us with long, drawn out solving that what compounded by the fact we were handcuffed!
The flow was decent, and time sinks aside the game moved along at a good pace. Signposting had moments of brilliance (which had been put in by the owners!) and moments of madness (which I assume are NERD!) – there were connections and leaps that I would never have got unless I was told (maybe we were addled from a week long binge though, another day we may have clicked onto the room much better)
All in all this is a decent room, and I can see through our cuffs and with some critical thinking, knowing that being cuffed for the hour really impacted on what would have been a fun and enjoyable room, sans the handcuffs!
Moral of the story is… don’t be like us and be too shy to ask where the handcuff key is!
Enthusiasts, rise to the challenge and take a small team, newbies, a larger team will bode well!
Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen
Game Host:
Gordon was our game host and was incredibly welcoming and friendly, and delivered us hints well, especially when we had a massive math malfunction (which happens often!) We would have defintely been locked in forever if Gordon hadn’t helped us out!
Did we escape?
Yes, but by the skin of our teeth with 30 seconds left on the clock!
Website: https://www.xscapenow.co.uk/
Price:
2 Players £46
3 Players £63
4 Players £76
5 Players £85
6 Players £90
Brit of an Escape Habit 