Escape Rooms Cardiff: The Tomb

How does sand always get into my socks?!

You stumble inside the lost tomb of Tutankhamun in search for missing Howard Carter and his 4 sacred pyramids. You have 60 minutes to find Howard and retrieve all 4 of them before you awaken Tutankhamun! This game’s challenge is more hands-on skill rather than mental but played in the dark with torches, there’s plenty of thinking to do, don’t you worry!…

We’d already done ‘The Heist’ so thought we’d come back for one more room (ended up being two but that’s another story). We chose The Tomb as it was apparently a little different to the others and was supposed to be well staged.

Our GM gave us a briefing and explained the challenges that were ahead of us. He also gave a warning about how we only had a finite amount of one item and if we wasted it and ran out then it was game over (no not time, or oxygen). Rooms that have this sudden death feature added always feel a bit more edgy.

First impressions were certainly good as you step into the room and realise that you are standing on sand. Hieroglyphs and puzzles adorned the walls and there were plenty of things around the room for us to get started on.

It’s easy to see the ‘big’ puzzles in this room, they are very much front and centre in the room. There are a number of small puzzles dotted around the place too so there is plenty to keep you going. The early parts of this room weren’t linear at all so the whole team was able to get started on something and no-one felt left out, although one puzzle we spent a while trying to solve only to find out we didn’t have all the bits we needed for it.

There were no real wow moments in this room but it was still a fun one to do and other than a couple of small things it was very immersive and everything flowed well. It’s such a small thing but simply adding sand to the floor made it feel like a much more well designed room and only heightened the enjoyment.

PUZZLES

This wasn’t a hard room and the puzzles very much reflected that, although it’s worth noting that some of the puzzles were more physical than mental, but still not overly exerting. It was actually quite a nice turn of pace to have a room with these big clunky items in them that you have to solve rather than just full on brain work.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

This room looked good and felt like more attention to detail had gone into it to make it feel more immersive. The only time we felt this was broken was when technology was introduced that was far from Egyptian. I’m pretty sure that the ancient Egyptians didn’t have black light or padlocks.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our friendly and attentive GM gave clues and nudges (when needed) over a screen in the room – Egyptians definitely had TV, don’t question it…

ANYTHING ELSE

As previously mentioned the one thing we didn’t like was the fact that the room was very dark in places and this made it more frustrating than anything else. If a room is going to be dark then they need to provide good torches, unfortunately the torches for this weren’t great – room for improvement.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 5 people (escaped in 39:22)

Address:119 St. Mary Street, Cardiff, CF10 1DY

Website: https://www.escaperoomscardiff.co.uk