Chronos One Escape Rooms: Keep Calm! (London)

Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler?

It’s the middle of the Blitz, you & your team of British Intelligence agents have been sent to search through a fellow KIA agent’s office, turns out they weren’t who we thought!

Can you uncover their secrets and stop their plans in time?

*Since playing, this venue has rebranded to Chronos One Escape Rooms

We’ve been meaning to make it to Eltham for a while but it always seemed a bit far out of our way, as it turns out it isn’t. At the time of writing there were currently two rooms at Eltham Escape Rooms Chronos One Escape Rooms, Temporal Tours and their new room, Keep Calm! (update – they now have a lot more!). Logically we probably should have tried Temporal Tours first, but the only availability they had was for Keep Calm! So the decision was made for us.

Easy to find and a short walk from Eltham Station, they have a prime position in the high street so you can’t miss them. When we arrived there was a large group of kids in the lobby so we dumped our stuff in the locker and then were whisked away upstairs to our room. In hindsight we can’t remember if there was an seating in the waiting room, but we’d assume there must be?

We didn’t receive much backstory for the room so I wasn’t sure exactly what we were there to do, but an envelope in the room filled in some of the gaps on that. Although the GM was good and enthusiastic it would have been a good touch if they were at-least dressed in clothing representative of the theme rather than their Eltham Escape Room uniforms. Liz is a stickler for a good story and I know she would have really appreciated more of a show, rather than being led into the room and being told ‘your time will begin when I leave the room’.

The room itself was a good size and can easily accommodate larger team sizes, and the puzzles weren’t linear so we were able to work on different things at the same time. Lighting was for the most part good, but there was on part later in the room where a small torch would have been useful – it wasn’t really needed but at the time we were trying to work out what to do and if something was relevant to the puzzle so it would have been easier if we could see a bit better.

Despite one puzzle nearly causing a divorce, we had a fun time in this room. Enthusiasts are never really the target market for escape room companies and I feel like this room probably caters towards newbies more than weirdos like us, but enthusiasts can still take some enjoyment from completing this room.  As a bonus, this room hasn’t been open long and being the first enthusiasts to take it on means we currently have the record time (this won’t last long at all).

We have since been chatting with Eltham Escape Rooms and at their request we gave them our feedback. It’s nice when owners are receptive to feedback from enthusiasts and are willing to action change from it. They agree that there is an issue with the puzzle that we struggled on and they are planning to change it to make it more logical. Another puzzle was simple enough to solve but felt misleading in places and they explained that there was more to this puzzle originally but they striped it down following feedback, so it may change some more.

Eltham Escape Rooms have plans to open a number of new rooms and they are passionate about creating great experiences so I have high-hopes that their next rooms will be worth a visit. Now we just need to get out to Eltham again to give Temporal Tours a try.

PUZZLES

Other than one puzzle, which I’ll come back to, the puzzles were straight-forward and logical and wouldn’t be a challenge for enthusiasts. There was an element of searching where you had to find items which were either hidden, or ‘hidden in plain sight’ – we only found a couple of them through chance.

We would have completed this room in a much better time had it not been for one puzzle, this puzzle frustrated us immensely and we wasted probably around 10 minutes on it. The GM had actually warned us about a puzzle before hand so they were obviously aware that people struggle on it. The problem we had was that it was far too ambiguous as to what you were supposed to do with it. We identified the objects we needed but finding a way to get the answer was just beyond us, in the end we needed two clues (our only clues) to get it. We actually had the answer prior to receiving the second clue but despite trying all logical variations of the answer it just wasn’t working, as it turns out we need an illogical answer.

A combination for one lock was on show and even a cursory look around the room makes it obvious, I would have liked to have seen this hidden or something a bit cleverer done with it as it just felt a bit easy and like a cop-out.

The crowning glory of this room, and where I’d imagine most attention and money has been spent, is on the last ‘puzzle’, it’s rather imposing and a great way to end the room. I like puzzles that are made up of smaller puzzles that all need to be solved to complete the mission, and that is what this room did.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

With sandbags in the window and era-appropriate music playing over a speaker system, first impressions were good. There was decent attention to detail with the decor and really the only thing that didn’t feel like it belonged in the room was a modern torch (with no batteries) that I gather was only included because it had a camouflage pattern on it.

An experienced team will have no problems seeing where you are likely to progress with this room but they have done well to disguise what could otherwise be obvious. At one point in the game you think you’re going to progress in one direction and they throw a bit of a curve ball and you go where perhaps you didn’t realise you would.

The set dressing all felt true to the theme and there was a nice use of historical-reproductions which one could argue were red-herrings, but really you would waste such little time on them that you would realise they were not part of the game.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our GM Anthony was enthusiastic and welcoming and was on the ball when we needed clues. Help was delivered when requested, and you could ask for help by striking a bell located in the room. Clues were then delivered by the GM phoning in (in character) through a red phone in the room.

ANYTHING ELSE

There’s no timer in this room and instead the GM will call on the phone every ten minutes to tell you that another ten minutes has past. This actually became more of an annoyance to us as it broke the rhythm of the game and ended up costing more time listening to him telling us another ten minutes had passed.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players (escaped in 45:38)

Address: 3 St Mary’s Place, Eltham, SE9 1BL

Website: https://www.chronosoneescaperooms.com/