Escape Rooms Cardiff: Z Room [BETA TEST]

Like something straight out of a horror movie

You guessed it, Zombies. You’ve managed to locate the safe house and medical unit of a zombie hunter. He’s abandoned ship and left the bunker’s defence system down. You have 60 minutes to get all systems back up & running otherwise. you. are. food.

Firstly we weren’t charged to do this room as we were invited to do it as beta testers the day before it opened. This doesn’t affect the review but it’s worth noting that some things will have changed from when we tested it to when it went live.

We had already done The Tomb and The Heist at Escape Rooms Cardiff and as our group was pretty experienced they asked if we would be interested in beta testing their new zombie themed room. It’s nice when owners take the time to listen to feedback from enthusiasts so of course we were happy to help.

We were given a brief intro by the GM explaining why we were there and what we had to do, which was get the power back on-line to keep the zombie horde from eating our brains. Then we were in the room with nothing but a walkie-talkie and our wits (crap).

The room was surprisingly well lit for a horror room which was nice to see. So often horror rooms make the game harder/slower by making it dark. This room didn’t need to do that, it was hard enough even in good lighting!

We actually only got out with a few minutes to spare so if we hadn’t bypassed a puzzle (one key worked in two locks) then we may have recorded our first failure.

PUZZLES

Some of the puzzles in this room were very good and all were very clever although the puzzle that involved the blood bags frustrated Liz as she was doing it in what she considered to be the logical way and I’d agree it was, but that wasn’t how it was meant to be done.

Another puzzle involved a specialist bit of equipment which depending on how you used it could give different answers. There was no clear definition on which way to use it to get the correct reading and for us we lost a lot of time because it wasn’t clear.

We completely bypassed one puzzle due to a fault with the game which the owners didn’t know about, but after the game they explained how the puzzle would have worked and it was a toughie but did make sense.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

They’ve done a really good job with this room in making it feel like something straight out of a horror movie, and I would say that this is a horror themed room. There were some nice features which gave the room an edge and they even managed to fit in some surprises here and there.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The GM was attentive (as you would expect from a Beta test) and provided feedback pretty much instantaneously via the walkie-talkie provided.

ANYTHING ELSE

If this beta test was anything to go by then this is going to be a hard room but also a good room and it was very different from the other rooms we did on our Cardiff day. The owners took down copious notes from our feedback so I’m confident it should run smoothly when launched properly.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 5 players

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

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