Dark Master: One Wing Airlines (Crowborough)

Fear of Flying? Good luck…

LEAKED FILES HAVE REVEALED THE DARK MASTER’S WHEREABOUTS…

…and we’ve booked you seats on the only flight headed in that direction. There’s just one problem, it’s with One Wing Airlines. And we all know their history of doomed journeys.

Recruits (that’s you) will need to board the flight and, providing the plane arrives at its destination safely, find and detain The Dark Master. For all our sakes, let’s hope your team returns in one piece.

DarkMaster are a new escape room company that seems to have appeared from nowhere. Nestled in a great location near top quality escape rooms like Tulleys, Hounds, and ClueCracker, they certainly chose some high level companies to be near. One Wing Airlines was our second game of the day as we had just played Into the Reliquary, and one thing is clear, these guys don’t mess around when it comes to set design!

DarkMaster are located very much in the countryside but still easily accessible and their location has free onsite parking which certainly makes life easier. On entering the premises you get a feel for what they are striving for, with a beautifully put together reception/waiting area, and if you walk down any of the corridors you will see the game theming spilling out of the rooms and into this common space – a nice touch.

The reception had everything we needed for our short stay, drinks and snacks for sale (free lotus biscuits!), comfy seats, spacious lockers for our goodies, a toilet (always useful), and delightful conversation with the owner and our host for the games, Ellie.

After cooling down and removing some sand from our shoes from Into the Reliquary, it was time to catch our flight. Ellie gave us the story and health and safety briefing and then it was time to embark. We had a feeling this wasn’t going to be a typical flight though and were certainly expecting some theatrics.

Covid-19 Precautions: There was plenty of hand sanitiser for us to use. We were allowed to remove masks in the game (we wore them in public areas but don’t know if we had to). Staff didn’t wear masks but were social distancing.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

There is no question about it, DarkMaster are going for immersion and their set design is some of the most impressive you’ll see anywhere. I would hazard a guess that the set for this game was once genuinely part of a plane as it looked spot on.

When you think about flying there is a ‘T’ word that goes hand-in-hand with it, Turbulence. I can’t recall ever being on a flight without a little bumpiness, and DarkMaster even managed to add that into Flight 1313 – impressive. This wasn’t just a little turbulence though, it was actually quite violent, fortunately there was a button you could press to stop it if it all became a bit too much.

There was a good journey through this game and the way you move from one space to another was particularly clever and managed to keep with the immersion, although it’s worth noting that you’ll need to be relatively agile to complete this.

PUZZLES

This game contained pretty much everything you’d expect to see on any regular flight, socks, magazines, passport, tickets, sunglasses, etc… If it was normally on a plane then there is a good chance it is in here somewhere – so the first challenge is to filter through what is needed and what isn’t. Unfortunately for us, because of the quantity of extra items we completely discarded something we needed and this slowed us down immensely.

The game itself was very search heavy and there were lots of little bits and pieces that we collected that we didn’t know if we’d need them or not. Aside from the heavy searching, there was some observation, logic, maths (calculator provided), wordplay, and one or two more physical tasks (nothing major).

The logic puzzle was a bit of a beast and I actually left Liz to work on that one while I solved other bits and pieces. I’d say that the room had linear aspects to it, but there was some opportunity for splitting up.

One puzzle later in the game we actually solved but we’re still not convinced how. We either got lucky first time, or there were multiple ways to solve it. Either way, we completed it, but I’m not sure how.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The regular clue system wasn’t working when we played so we were given walkie-talkies to use (which was fine). Had the main system been working it would have utilised the on-board telephone so would have been part of the design of the game and not felt out of place. It’s nice when a company thinks about little things like this.

As it was, we needed a few hints here and there, mostly for search fails, and when we needed them, Ellie chimed in over the walkie-talkies quickly to get us back on track.

ANYTHING ELSE

For us, there was a bit too much going on in this game which meant we couldn’t focus on what we needed and ended up missing key things. DarkMaster are certainly up there with the best for their set design, but I think the puzzles left us wanting a bit more.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 46 minutes

Address: Unit 5 Plumyfeather Farm, Plumyfeather Lane, Lye Green, Crowborough, East Sussex, TN6 1UX

Website: https://darkmaster.co.uk/