Detention shouldn’t be this much fun
English Teacher, Miss Read, is fuming…
Someone has stolen her mobile phone during today’s lesson, and she has been told that you are the culprits! As a punishment, you are in after school detention with Headteacher – Miss B Haive.
You have your suspicions that long-term rival and fellow classmate, Gabby “Goodie Two Shoes” Gosling, has stitched you up – but can you prove it? You have 60 minutes to locate the phone and clear your name… Good luck!
We’re not often in Cornwall, but when we are we always like to break up our journey by playing escape rooms (we do that when we got pretty much anywhere actually). The perfect stopping off point always seems to be around the Bodmin area, fortunately there’s a few escape room options in that area, including Dreadlock.
Last time we were in town we played Witch Way Out and Let the Games Begin which was all they had open at the time. Dreadlock have been busy though and since our last visit, they opened up Detention. It’s odd to be excited by detention perhaps, but we had a lot of fun when we were last here so were keen to see what they had been up to.
We found the location easily enough. It’s tucked away behind a holiday camp, so you have to go on a bit of a magical mystery tour to get to it (past the main building, and the Foot Golf, and keep going). But it’s a lovely area and really quite peaceful. When we arrived we were greeted by our host, Deb.
After a bit of a catchup with Deb, it was time to get to detention! We received the health and safety briefing in reception and then were led down the winding corridors to the entrance to the room. Once we were in the room, a lot of memories of childhood came rushing back (good or bad? I can’t decide), and we were told to take a seat to receive our briefing through the TV by our teacher. With our objectives clear, we did what anyone else would try to do in this situation – try to escape Detention!
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
The other games at Dreadlock are lovely and well designed (especially Witch Way Out), and although it’s much easier to design a room that looks like a classroom, they did a good job to make it feel authentic. If you went to primary school in the UK then this will probably bring back a few memories.
I was thinking about it while playing, and also after, that this room was very quiet. Normally I am not a fan of quiet rooms, but I’m not exactly sure what they could have done to add extra atmosphere really. From what I remember of Detention (not that I ever had one, honest) was that it was quiet and really boring – so at least they only kept the quiet element, as this room was certainly not boring.
If your child went to school and had a classroom like this, you’d probably complain about the lack of windows and ventilation – but this is an escape room so we’ll let them off. But other than that, it had the usual things you’d expect to find in a detention themed escape room; desks, teachers desk, chairs, lockers, and various items from different school subjects.
PUZZLES
This game had a good mix of puzzle types and thanks to its mix of linear and non-linear puzzles, it’s sure to be a hit with larger groups. Cornwall doesn’t really attract the enthusiast market so most of the games there are seemingly targeted towards family groups, but we’ve found the games at Dreadlock seem to do a good job of having something for everyone.
If Detention was this fun, I think we’d all have been getting in trouble at school! The puzzles generally fitted into the following categories; searching, observation, audio, colour, maths and logic – don’t worry though, it wouldn’t be detention without a notepad and calculator being available!
The puzzles were not only fun to solve but also fitted into the theme perfectly. Think about some school subjects and you’ll have a pretty good idea what you’ll find here… music class, geography, history – yep, all present.
Not the most high-tech room as most of the puzzles resulted in combinations for padlocks, but it’s a school, what would you expect? Budget cuts and all that. Saying that though, there was a little tech used.
I think we enjoyed pretty much all the puzzles in this game, and two of them in particular felt quite fun and clever once we stepped back from them a little. Another puzzle however was quite a slow burn and somehow we managed to mess it up twice yet get the same result each time – not sure what we did there but fortunately we managed to solve it enough to bruteforce our way out of it.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
For the most part, we gelled with this room. But, there were a couple of areas where we came unstuck and needed to ask for help. The puzzles were 100% fair and logical, however our search game was very much not on point and we needed help to find something that we missed by being too careful, and another thing we missed by not searching something as thoroughly as we should have.
When we did need help, we couldn’t just ask for it – we had to sit at a seat and raise our hand, just like being in detention! Deb was obviously keeping an eye on our progress as when we did need a bit of help, it appeared almost instantly on the screen and was enough to get us back on track.
This game had a countdown timer on the screen, but Dreadlock are kind and even though there is a countdown, they do give teams a little buffer to try and help everyone get through the game.
ANYTHING ELSE
Considering the theme was ‘Detention’, I can’t quite work out why, but this game was a delight. The puzzles were well thought out and the game flowed well. I think it helped that the room felt quite new and clean, but this game has cemented the fact that I think Dreadlock may be our favourite venue in Cornwall.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Operation | |
Puzzles | |
Room Design | |
GM/Clues | |
Excitement |
Team: 2 players – escaped in 45:18
Address: Waterside, Old Coach Rd, Lanivet, Bodmin PL30 5JJ
Website: https://www.dreadlockescape.co.uk
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