Ctrl Alt Esc: Spacescape (Margate)

Tech heavy with a strong finish

You and your crew are on a voyage to a newly discovered planet, but now the spaceship’s lights are flashing and alarms are sounding.

Surely you can just turn off the warnings and forget about it, or maybe you need to prepare the escape pod…

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Ctrl Alt Esc don’t just do Escape Rooms, they do technology based rooms and that is certainly what this room was. We did wonder how Ctrl Alt Escape and The Escapement can be only five minutes apart and not be competing with each other and it’s because they offer two very different, but equally great experiences.

Situated in a building that used to house a Chinese restaurant the team have done a great job to transform the space into something that makes egg fried rice a distant memory (is that good or bad?).

Before going into the room we were shown a briefing video explaining our mission as well as the usual health and safety blurb. Our in-character GM enthusiastically greeted us and took us to a secondary briefing area (hallway) to get our gear for the mission.

At the start of this game you are separated into different pods in which you have to work together to solve a puzzle to reunite your team. What’s clever about this room is that it is designed to be played by two or eight players and regardless of how many people you have, you can still complete the mission.

Liz was designated as Captain which makes sense as she is the sensible one, while I was designated as the medic, worrying. As a medic I was given an additional role that I had to perform throughout the game.

This isn’t just a solve this, solve that type of game, there are other elements to it which need to be completed throughout which actually do a good job of breaking your concentration, not in a bad way as it actually works with the story.

It wasn’t all rosy, being a tech room there will inevitably be some issues, and there were a few. In fairness to the GM these were resolved/fixed without breaking the immersion and they even found a way to fit it in to the story – it is an old ship after all.

If it wasn’t for the tech issues then this would be a five star room for us, but if you do this room and everything runs smoothly then this is definitely a five star room – and not the only one at Ctrl Alt Esc.

PUZZLES

A really good mix of puzzles in this room that I particularly enjoyed, there was even a little bit of adventure about one section which was fun. I have a habit of glazing over narratives and bits of story but fortunately Liz was listening as we would have been stumped without it and missed out of the ‘nastiest’ bit of the room.

One or two puzzles were slightly frustrating but as we’ve said before these may just be frustrating to us as our brains are wired differently. Although saying that there was one puzzle that Liz pretty much had a full on rage quit over yet I quite enjoyed when I took over.

Ctrl Alt Esc pride themselves on their padlock free environment and that was apparent in this room where there was not a single padlock in sight, like you would expect on a spaceship.

There was one bit of the room that we didn’t get and to us was a bit ambiguous about how anyone would know to do it, but it didn’t detract from the room at all.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Really impressive set design where they’ve tried to do something a little different to the norm and one could arguably say they have achieved it. Our GM greeted us in character and carried that through the experience, a background in acting possibly?

The last bit of the room seems to be where they saved their biggest ‘wow’ moment for and it certainly gave us a smile and was a great ending to the game.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our attentive GM delivered clues and nudges via an ‘onboard’ computer screen when needed or requested. We also had a helpful crew member ‘Mac’ who provided assistance occasionally.

ANYTHING ELSE

In places the room was dark and although given torches mine was a little faulty so I struggled. Liz had a good torch so I think I just got a dodgy one, which considering how much they get used is not surprising.

Ctrl Alt Del are doing a great job and when we did this room they were imminently opening their third room ‘Detention’ which we will definitely be back to check out.

Success / Failure

Final Rating: 

Team: 2 people

Address: 4 Cliff Terrace, Margate, Kent, CT9 1RU

Website: https://ctrlaltesc.co.uk/