Dark, very dark
There’s a killer on the rampage. Bodies are stacking up, and the police are dragging their feet. They’re not even convinced the killings are connected.
The killer is getting cocky – his crime scenes aren’t being discovered for weeks and the killer has taken to taunting those hunting them; after all, they’re not exactly close to being caught.
You and your team of vigilantes have been following the crimes with great interest, and you think you might have stumbled upon something of great importance – you have found the most recent crime scene… much earlier than the killer expected.
You have a unique chance to look through the undisturbed crime scene and maybe find a clue as to the killer’s next target. You might be able to save a life tonight.
It was day twelve of our escape room road trip that seemed to never end, and we had just spent the morning playing four games at Want to Escape in Rushden, next up was a drive to Peterborough to play three games at Angle Escape. We’d played in Peterborough before as there are quite a few venues there (a good escape room destination), but Angle Escape are the new kids in town so this was the first we had heard about them.
Angle Escape is pretty hard to miss with their bright orange branding (a theme carried through to the inside too) located above a carpet shop, and is conveniently situated over the road from a large supermarket where you can park for a few hours for free (*correct at time of writing) and grab a bite to eat at the golden arches. So having eaten a few too many cheeseburgers we found our way to the venue and headed up the stairs.
When we arrived we were greeted by one of our hosts for the games, Adam. We had a nice chat with Adam about escape rooms in general, and the weather (it was hot), then were given the health and safety briefing before being taken to the entrance to our first room of the day, Victim. Once outside, we were given our mission and entered the crime scene.
It’s also worth pointing out that for all the games at Angle Escape, we were locked in the room. There was an emergency key available, but something to consider if you’re not a fan of that. We have been told that if you’re not comfortable with the door being locked, they will leave it unlocked.
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 in place (but 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
In terms of this room looking like a crime scene, it certainly did, but I don’t know if that is a good thing or not. It’s a fine line in escape rooms between set design and red herrings and for us, we felt this game strayed a little too far over the line. There was paper everywhere, literally everywhere, and some of it had writing on so it was hard to know what we needed and what we didn’t (I’d also question how, in COVID times, they would be able to clean it all).
The other issue we encountered was that the space was dark, very dark, and we were provided with just one torch that pretty much crapped out on us. I couldn’t help but feel that if we were indeed going to a crime scene we’d have made sure to have decent torches and at least one each. This meant that a lot of the game was spent in frustration about not being able to see anything or really split up, as we couldn’t see clearly.
Saying that, if we did want to split up, the space was pretty massive so could easily accommodate larger teams. From what I understand, the Victim is a revamped game using props from an earlier game they had, which is fine, the set certainly felt like an office that had recently seen something horrid.
We didn’t really click with this game and struggled a lot, I can’t help but feel like we may have enjoyed it more if we had good torches and even a pen to take notes – there was so much paper it was annoying that we couldn’t write anything down.
A bit of added theatrics towards the end of the game was nice though and a way to bring everything to a close, or did it….?
PUZZLES
As I said, we didn’t click with this game at all. For us, we found there to be little to no signposting and it felt like we needed a hint on almost every puzzle. It probably didn’t help that this was a linear game and at times we’d find things that we didn’t need until later, but there was no way of knowing this. In hindsight the puzzles were quite simple but without the signposting they just didn’t work in the way you would have expected them too.
There was a lot of searching and sifting through ‘rubbish’ to find what we needed but really that was just for getting to our starting point and then searching became less prominent. After that, we encountered observation, logic, word play, and some logical thinking to connect the dots (or perhaps outside of the box thinking).
This was a very low tech room (not always a bad thing), so if we unlocked something that would normally reveal a keysafe which was the next thing we needed to unlock. So like I said, we found things but couldn’t use them until later and it made us just feel a bit all over the place.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
I’m not sure if it was Tiff or Anya who were on standby for giving us clues, but we certainly needed them (update: It was Tiff). When a game doesn’t click or the puzzles make sense to you, there is little you can do but to be spoon-fed by the GM. Whoever it was, they did a good job of making sure we received hints at the right points to avoid too much frustration.
The hints we did receive were over a speaker system in the room and were cryptic enough to make us change our way of thinking without actually giving us the answer. We had to work for it in this room!
ANYTHING ELSE
The Victim is, I believe, the earliest room they have at Angle Escape, and it does show. As we played their other games they improved in quality. If darkness and lack of signposting doesn’t bother you, then you may enjoy this, but for us we just didn’t get on with it and left feeling rather deflated.
Success/Failed
Final Rating:
Operation Puzzles Room Design GM/Clues Excitement
Team: 2 players – escaped in 38 minutes
Address: 939 Lincoln Road, First Floor, Peterborough, PE4 6AF
Website: https://www.angleescape.com
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