Escape from the Room: The Cabin in the Woods (Cheam)

Down at the bottom of the garden…

Ben Young was investigating a number of reported supernatural sightings when he went missing. Tracking his last known whereabouts, you find yourself locked in a cabin in the woods. But all is not as it seems. Ben Young has left you an encrypted message that might just explain what has happened to him. Search the cabin, follow the clues and crack the code to solve the mystery, ultimately leading to your escape.

It felt a bit odd going in to what was essentially someone’s house, but when we arrived we were lead around the back and into the garden shed! Yes, literally the garden shed. Ok, perhaps calling a shed is harsh as this is very much a cabin (not quite in the woods) and it is surprising how much space is in there.

Like most of the rooms at Escape from the Room, you are able to book an additional bolt on of 30 minutes to tackle some additional puzzles and turn your 60 minute room into 90 – we opted for the extended edition. Our GM showed us to the cabin and gave us a quick briefing on health and safety and explained how the ‘extra 30 mins’ worked.

Once the GM departed, we were left on a very comfortable couch to watch a video from Ben Young, the paranormal investigator whose disappearance we were trying to solve. Once the video was over our time began and we quickly got to work finding and solving puzzles.

The rooms starts off non-linear, which was nice as there was plenty to keep us going. Later on it does get more linear, but there is still enough to keep the whole team occupied. I really would have no hesitation in recommending this room, it’s a little different and has plenty to keep you on your toes, even with the extended version.

PUZZLES

This room really has so much to keep you going, and such variety that there is no chance you’ll get bored. You need logic and skill to do this room and even that is the bare-minimum, I really did lose count of how many times we said “Oh that’s clever” when solving a puzzle.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

So this is called ‘The Cabin in the Woods’, was it a cabin? Yes. Was it in the woods? No, but there were trees. To be honest when you’re in the cabin it could be in a wood for all you know as you don’t spend any time looking out the windows.

At first we thought this was going to be a pretty poor excuse for an escape room as the cabin didn’t look very big from the outside and we couldn’t see how it could have any surprises in store for us – boy were we wrong! This room just kept giving and giving, when we thought we had found everything, we found something else. I don’t want to give anything away but this room had one of the best reveals we’ve seen in a room and we didn’t see it coming.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The GM was very attentive and if we needed any nudges or clues then these were delivered via an iPod which was given to us at the start. The negative is that we were told one piece of the room was simply decor and not part of the game, yet later in the game we found this to not be the case as something was needed from it, this delayed us by a good few minutes.

ANYTHING ELSE

There may be an undertone of horror about this room, but it really isn’t a scary room and is safe to do with the family (if you really want to). There was a good level of lighting which you’d probably not expect from a cabin in the woods. As a bonus if one of your group gets tired or grumpy, they can have a nap on the sofa.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 5 players

Address: 23 Merrow Road, Cheam, Sutton SM2 7LU

Website: https://escapefromtheroom.co.uk