We waited a long time to do this room, it was worth it
The day is 18th August 1940 and the Luftwaffe have launched a resurgent attack on Britain, where your air base has been hit by the first wave of heavy bombing. As the only survivors, you must access the strategic ops room and mobilise the full force of the RAF to save Britain. But with a second attack imminent, can you also save yourselves?
Do you ever put off doing something because you really want to do it but you feel that the expectation may not live up to the hype? That is why it has taken us so long to do Battle for Britain, now I wish we’d done it sooner!
Liz and I did this room with one of our regular team members and a friend of hers, who had also done a few rooms. We’d all heard great things about this room so were very excited to give it a go.
After a couple of strategic time wasting detours on route (we got lost), we arrived at the venue which is located down a pretty little mews type street. Our GM for the evening greeted us and took us to the wonderfully themed waiting area.
After a short safety briefing by our GM, an introduction to the room, and our mission was played which was in the guise of a 1940’s newsreader – spot on!
The first room you encounter is a typical escape room experience where you need to find items to help you solve the puzzles to progress, but everything has just had a little bit more love and attention than you may normally find in an escape room.
The second room has elements of the traditional but the biggest part of the room is, for lack of a better word, amazing. They’ve managed to get the perfect mix of history, technology, and puzzles and merged it into an ending that we’ve never seen before.
This room is something special and is a must-play room in London, don’t wait like we did. Just do it.
PUZZLES
The regular puzzles you find in the rooms aren’t particularly hard but they do take a little bit of logical thinking, and some basic maths at one point. We potentially had an advantage as Liz and I had been part of the Beta Test group for Roll out the Barrel so we knew how one piece of ‘tech’ worked.
Once in the second room you knew exactly what your mission was and what you were working towards so it helped keep you focussed. The room wasn’t linear so we were able to split up and work on different things at the same time.
The last puzzle took the most time but oh my god what a puzzle! We enjoyed every single minute of this and the ending was so tense, fun, and exciting. What a room.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
The room design was wonderful, although well ignore the fact that there is a bar in the room next to the mission room (seems like a recipe for disaster). But ignoring that, it’s a well thought out room and all the puzzles fit with the theme.
Being critical there was one bit I wasn’t a fan of even though we solved it quickly. I won’t give it away but it involved finding something to solve something else, but the location of it just felt like it was put there to make it harder and I can’t help but feel it could have been hidden in plain sight somewhere else that would have felt more authentic.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Our GM was passionate about what he does and that came through in how he interacted with us. After the game when we questioned him about the building he gave us a detailed breakdown of the history of it, didn’t see that one coming (although he apparently studied history).
We didn’t need any clues so have no idea how the clue system worked but we’d assume something would have come over the tannoy system in the room and would have most likely been in character.
ANYTHING ELSE
Annoyingly we only shot down 70 enemy aircraft (out of 71) due to miscommunication and an error by me, we were so close! Had we taken more time to check our placements we’d have seen our mistake, but I was in such a rush to get a good time that we skipped final checks (sorry team).
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
| Operation | |
| Puzzles | |
| Room Design | |
| GM/Clues | |
| Excitement |
Team: 4 players (completed in 40mins and downed 70 planes)
Address: 13A Iliffe Yard, London SE17 3QA
Website: https://escapeplanltd.com
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