Angle Escape: The Getaway (Peterborough)

Quite a getaway

Everything is fine.

The good news about being poor is that when you’re offered to tag along with some friends you’ve never met by that one aunt you don’t quite know from your weird father’s side of the family, it sounds like a total victory!

You and your friends have accompanied these totally normal people out for a mountain holiday, and find yourselves in their completely fine and not at all dilapidated dwelling far from civilization for a totally mad night of board games and flat lemonade. The best part? It’s free.

The problem with this otherwise fantastic set-up is the fact that your otherwise perfect selves have a complete disregard for both Monopoly and other people’s privacy. You’re fairly certain digging through this old mountain dwelling wont turn up anything unusual – but you’d be rude not to check! Right?

Our escape room road trip was starting to wind down, and on day 12 we visited Peterborough to check out one of the newest venues, Angle Escape. The venue was easy to find and just over the road from a large Morrison’s supermarket that had plenty of free (up to three hours) parking.

We had already played Victim and it was now time for the next game, The Getaway, the second game of three at Angle Escapes (Candy Shop would be played after this game). We were familiar with the health and safety briefing, which was delivered by Adam in the reception area, so we were taken down the hallway to the entrance to the cabin where the mission specific briefing was given.

I must confess we knew very little about any of the games at Angle escape and guessed what most of their games were about simply from the title. I was very wrong with this game, I wrongly assumed it was a heist game, but they meant ‘Getaway’ as in going on holiday, not getting away from the cops.

Covid-19 Procedures: we wore masks at all times, as did all the staff on site. There was hand sanitiser for us to use, track and trace was apparently available too (we missed it). I think we may have seen one other team on site, but logistics worked well so we didn’t come in close contact with them. We played in early June 2021

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

One trend that is apparent in all games at Angle Escapes (although perhaps not so much in Candy Shop) is the use of darkness, and that was very much the case in The Getaway. It was dark, not pitch black, but as no torches were provided it made it much trickier to see what we needed, although we did manage to complete it. In terms of the story, I would question why we went to a cabin in the woods without any torches? Seems a bit odd.

The space itself was suitably ‘cabin in the woods’ but because of this it didn’t offer much in the way of exploration. There wasn’t a lot to explore and with the dimmed light we spent quite a while trying to work out what we were supposed to do first to get us started. Later in the game there was a dramatic change which was certainly unexpected and I think I liked it.

Although this is a creepy room, there are no live actors and there are just the occasional jump scare. Definitely not one for the family though! I think this room would have benefitted from the first space being a bit less ‘horror’ and then the second area would have been more of a surprise.

PUZZLES

The Getaway played out in a very linear way so there was no chance of us splitting up to work on different things, although we did split up early on while we tried to work out where we were supposed to get started.

Other than ‘difficulty by darkness’ there were some minor search elements, observation, pattern recognition, wordplay, and logic. Nothing was too difficult and there was some decent signposting for one part of the game, although other areas possibly could have benefitted from a bit more.

There were padlocks in the room but also some ‘tech’ aspects too, which I suspect was the GM triggering things behind the scenes.

It’s probably worth pointing out that one part of the game involved something that could best be described as devil-worshipping (I can’t think of a better way of describing it), so if that’s not your thing, then perhaps give this one a miss.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

We’re not sure who provided the clues for our game, but it was with Tiff or Anya (update: It was Tiff). When we did need clues, they came over the speakers system in the room and we just had to ask for them. I don’t remember how many clues we needed, but it felt like we needed a lot. Either we weren’t on form, or this game just didn’t click with us, but it felt like we struggled more than we have in other games.

ANYTHING ELSE

The Getaway firmly sits in the ‘horror-esque’ category for escape rooms but is more creepy than scary. It’s dark and probably needlessly so, but out of the three games we played at Angle Escapes, this one falls firmly in the middle of the three for enjoyment.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 38 minutes

Address: 939 Lincoln Road, First Floor, Peterborough, PE4 6AF

Website: https://www.angleescape.com