March 2024
Breakin' Escape Rooms- London
Sherlock's Despair
Overview
With a cheeky weekend away in London planned for one of team’s birthday, we decided to try our hand at a couple of games in the nations capital. Sherlock’s Despair at Breakin’ escapes was a second and final room for the weekend after completing Heist. The reception was large and spacious, however, no where to get any refreshments and unlike the friendliness of local businesses, the hosts were very abrupt and to the point.
The room itself wasn’t that bad, decorated as you can imagine as a typical Sherlock old style room. There were some elements in the room that didn’t make a lot of sense and seemed to have just been thrown in to fill a space. It wasn’t the worse room we’ve been in but we did expect a bit more after just completing Heist.
The puzzles weren’t that linear and there was enough for all 4 of us to get our teeth stuck into. There was a strong maths puzzle that even tested me and I do love maths. It turned out that we had the components of the puzzle wrong and it made the maths 100 times harder and we spent a long time on it, wrongly. Some of the other puzzles in the room, again just felt like they were thrown in and did not fit the theme of the game at all. It was a shame as some parts of the game were really good but the small parts of it seemed to let it down for us.
There is a clue system in place where you have to put a code into a telecom by the door and the code will give you a hint of where you are. Again, this seemed to be a less personal touch and distanced the host from us as a team throughout the game. We had to use it a couple if times when we came to dead end but it did what it was supposed to do but just our preference, we didn’t enjoy it.
Round Up
As mentioned in our other review of Breakin’, there is a distinct lack of customer service and the personal touch and I guess this has something to do with being in a corporate avenue in one of the most corporate cities in the world. It just wasn’t for us and we much prefer supporting local businesses and watching them grow. The room was a bit of a let down compared to Heist that we had just done. There were elements that didn’t fit with the theme and this stopped us being fully immersed in the game. Again, it’s probably worth doing if you are stuck for a room to do in London but I am sure there are better options out there. Especially for the money.
Team: 4 Players
Time Escaped: 55:00
Success/Failed: Success
Company Details:
March 2024
Breakin' Escape Rooms- London
Heist Plan
Overview
With a cheeky weekend away in London planned for one of team’s birthday, we decided to try our hand at a couple of games in the nations capital. After a lot of research, we decided to try Breakin’ escapes and the first room was to be Heist. After further research, Heist was based on a famous car heist film franchise and it certainly a bit different than what are used to trying in game themes. The reception was large and spacious, however, no where to get any refreshments and unlike the friendliness of local businesses, the hosts were very abrupt and to the point. Typical London!
The scene was set as a car mechanic garage and they had done a good job on allowing you to become immersed into the theme of trying to fix your car up and completing the heist. The design of the room was very good on the surface but the more of the game we played, we started to see that it was a bit tired and some of the puzzles didn’t work as they should have.
As mentioned above, the game itself was actually quite enjoyable with some hands on games that none of us had seen before and we did enjoy. However, a couple of them didn’t work as planned and on one of the main puzzles towards the end, when we thought we had done it all, the host started probing us over the radio asking how we had completed it and what we had done wrong. In actual fact, we had done it correctly but the system didn’t pick it up and it was clear that the host wasn’t watching us properly or they would have seen that we done it. After a few more reviews of this room, it doesn’t look like we are the only ones to have this happened too, so be aware.
There was a digital clock in the corner of the room to keep an eye on the clock and there was also a radio for the host to communicate to us. We didn’t ask for any clues ourselves and we got into the grove relatively easily with this room but as mentioned above, the host clearly wasn’t watching us closely or they would have seen we were on track.
Round Up
It was a culture shock for us in the Big Smoke to not have the warmth and friendliness that we are used to back home in the Westcounty with local businesses actually caring if you enjoyed your visit. Here at Breakin’, they genuinely made zero attempt to interact with us and started clearing the room up before we had even walked out of the room. When we walked into the building, there was no pleasantries and we were just told to sit and wait. If we hadn’t of booked a second room straight after Heist, we probably wouldn’t have stayed just because of how we were made to feel but the room was actually pretty decent and if you don’t care about customer service and just want to play a game, Heist is worthy of a visit.
Team: 4 Players
Time Escaped: 48:00
Success/Failed: Success
Company Details:
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