Escape Time: Prison X (St Ives)

Inoffensive, traditional prison escape fun

Prison X is notoriously known for being the highest secure jail in the UK. Only one single escape has been accomplished by inmates.

Rumour has it that Trevor Ashcroft left some clues into his escape route and has never been seen again since his escape.

Due to the reputation the prison has gained, escape attempts rarely happen. However you have noticed that in recent times the guards are becoming a little more relaxed in their duties and even leaving area’s unattended for anything up to an hour.

The time has come where you have decided that it is your time to attempt what only one previous person has ever achieved. Can you escape Prison X?

St Ives is a lovely little village, but it does get stupendously busy. We even visited outside of the school holidays and still found it to be busy, fortunately there is an escape room company there, so we could get a little bit of peace, even for just 60 minutes.

Escape Time is a multi-venue escape room, with games in St Ives and Burton-on-Trent. We’ve not played at the Burton venue but figured as we were in St Ives, we’d give that one a try. When we were there they had two games open, but we could only make the timings work for one so we chose Prison X.

Our team for this prison escape was to be the usual two of us, plus our friend Sarah, who is part of our extended team ‘Better Than Halloumi’. We arrived at the venue bang on time, and were greeted by our GM, Jimmy. Jimmy escorted us into the building and then to the waiting room for Prison X – they have two waiting rooms here so plenty of room for if there are two teams on site at the same time.

After making use of the facilities on site (they have toilets here), Jimmy left us alone to watch the health and safety video, followed by the room specific briefing – both of these briefings were via the TV in our waiting area. Having done a final check that the room was ready, Jimmy then reappeared and showed us to our cell.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Fortunately I’ve never actually been to prison, but I’ve seen enough TV shows and documentaries to know what it’s like. One thing I don’t think I’ve ever seen, except in perhaps small town America jails, is where the prison cell is directly next to the guard’s office (as in the bars for the cell look into it) – so an interesting design choice already, but it’s an escape room so it’s all about suspending our disbelief anyway.

I don’t recall any background or ambient noises (just seagulls outside) but Prison X had the usual sort of things you’d expect to find in a prison cell; toilet, bars, bricks etc… The guards office again had the usual items; desks, screens, chairs, lockers, washing machine… wait, what? Yep a washing machine, odd but fair enough.

The venue itself is up a bit of a hill and then there are some steep steps to get in, but once you’re inside everything seems to be pretty much level. In Prison X one person on your team will need to be able to crawl a little, but not the entire team. Also worth pointing out that we were never locked in the room and could leave at any time through the door we entered.

PUZZLES

If you play Prison X in a larger team then early on one of your challenges will be getting around each other, but it does open up soon enough and doesn’t feel claustrophobic. The game also becomes quite non-linear in places so we found that we were able to split up and work independently at times.

The puzzles themselves all fitted around the general prison theme and involved; searching, observation, codes, colours, and a small amount of physicality/dexterity (I think that’s the best word for it, but you certainly won’t be building up a sweat).

The majority of the puzzles were quick wins, but there was one longer puzzle that slowly built throughout the game and saw our whole team working on it towards the end. Generally the puzzles resulted in codes for padlocks, but there was a small amount of tech.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

If we needed any clues, and I think we may have done due to some poor searching (standard for us), then Jimmy would deliver them over the screen in the room (which also displayed a timer). When we requested a clue we didn’t have to wait long and Jimmy was able to get us back on track in no time.

After the game Jimmy took our team photo against their photo wall and kindly informed us that we had managed to go top of their leaderboard – a nice added bonus.

ANYTHING ELSE

Prison X was pretty much your standard prison escape type of game, but with a slight twist at the end – oh and a washing machine, because, why not? If you’re in St Ives and looking for a game to play, then this more traditional style escape room could help you escape the busy streets below.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 3 players – escaped in 35:17

Address: First Floor, Cornerstone House, Park Ave, Saint Ives TR26 2DN

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