Escape Rooms – Dark side of the moon

From http://www.escaperooms.co.uk/angel.html

In the 1960’s both the USSR and the USA made groundbreaking discoveries on their famous lunar missions. The Americans were the first to step foot on the Moon and the Russians Luna 3 space probe captured and released the first photographs ever taken of the Moon.

However both the Soviet and US governments kept some dark secrets from their missions. Declassified images revealed human activity on the dark side of the moon – the wreckage of a secret Nazi base. Since this new information came to light our own lunar telescopes have monitored the site and shown no activity…… until now. A few days ago, at an abandoned radio station in Berlin, we intercepted a cipher message which was traced back to the secret moon base. It read only one word, “bereit” meaning “ready”.

So today you, as our brightest agents, will ascend to the Moon. You need to find the enemy base and destroy what is left of it and anyone you find there. Our intelligence suggests an attack is imminent, you must complete your mission before time runs out.

Team- Ster, Ni, Simon, Stu

Played – 14/8/17

(Reviewed by Ster)

Escape Rooms

Escape Room’s London Bridge location has two fantastic games that we really enjoyed playing, so we were excited to get going at their new location. The hosts were welcoming and there was plenty of space to sit and grab a drink before our game began.

The Room

Dark Side of the Moon has a unique theming, with the mission being to infiltrate a secret Nazi base hidden away in space. The first section of the room does really well in highlighting this theme and setting up the premise, but the immersiveness fell away a bit as we played as the story didn’t really progress and the décor became quite generic as we continued.

This was a very different game to other escape experiences that we’ve played before. There was a fair amount of running and some puzzles that required a good degree of movement, which could be a barrier for some players. That being said, once we became accustomed to the style of game play, I really enjoyed searching for where we would be going next and the anticipation of what we would discover. The space felt so big, due to the truly impressive layout, and I really enjoyed exploring so many different areas as we progressed through the game.

As an escape room experience, this felt a bit more like a story led game of laser tag that an actual escape! There weren’t many puzzles to solve and those that we did encounter weren’t overly taxing. That being said, we were in no way bored or left without anything to do due to the lack of puzzles, it was just a very different experience.

The finale was an interesting end to the game but to be honest, we were mainly confused and one member of our team was left bleeding and we had to detour to find some first aid supplies on our way home!

Ni – This was definitely not a traditional room escape, there were very few puzzles and instead a lot of running around to new areas. I did enjoy always being surprised at what was round the next corner, but did miss having to use my brain to get out. It was enjoyable, but not a favourite.

Simon – The premise of this game is definitely an interesting one, although fairly implausible. Like the other game on this site, the space is used really well in here and this definitely feels like an adventure. While there were puzzle elements in this room, the focus tended to be more on the physical and running aspects. This is an incredibly well themed room with impressive moments, however, like the other game on this site, it suffers from the mobile devices not being as responsive as they could be and background soundtrack sometimes being too loud. A very different game, but still enjoyable.

Score

This was great fun, mainly due to the fact that it was such a unique experience! As I ran through the game I found myself constantly amazed by how well the space had been utilised to make the room feel absolutely massive. The games at Escape Room’s Angel location focus a lot more on technology and this room is more like a live action video game than an escape. If that had been what we were expecting when we started then I think we would have enjoyed the experience a lot more as it was really good fun, but as a team that turned up looking to solve puzzles and really get our brains working, we did leave feeling a little underwhelemed.

Difficulty

2/5

Overall

3/5