This serial killer has a bit of personality
In recent months, a serial killer has committed ten ghastly murders. You have been captured by him, and are currently being held at his home in his closet. You have 60 minutes before the serial killer returns to commit his eleventh murder.
Folkestone probably isn’t somewhere that we are likely to visit regularly so rather than doing one room we thought we may as well do two. The Serial Killer’s Lair was our second room of the day and we went straight in after completing The Compactor.
The premise is pretty straight forward, you’ve been captured by a serial killer and you have to escape before he returns. Unlike many rooms with a similar theme, this one you start in the killer’s ‘closet’.
Our GM gave us the background story while we were standing outside the door to the room then he wished us luck and we were in.
The first room is pretty small (what would you expect from a closet?) and then impressively it gets smaller from there before opening out again into ‘normal’ sized rooms. As a team of two, we felt like we had just enough room but if you were a bigger group you may struggle for space early on.
We were out of the closet (no, not like that) in no time at all and felt like we were on a roll. We got stumped by one puzzle a little as we found something earlier than we should have so it threw us off. Generally though this is a pretty straight forward room that won’t blow your socks off, but will give you an hour (or less) of mindless fun.
We should have been out quicker than we were but we had two search fails that cost us. Adding to the confusion was the GM telling us that we had all we needed to escape and to ‘Run’ when actually we didn’t. We lacked the final key, which is kind of important if you want to open a door to get out. In the end we escaped in around 36 minutes having taken the two clues.
PUZZLES
Most of the puzzles in this room involved finding items which were hidden around the lair. Nothing stands out as being particularly challenging or unique, and there were a fair number of padlocks around the place.
I like rooms where all the puzzles fit in the with theme and make sense in the room, that wasn’t really the case with this room as a number of puzzles felt like they were just in there because they needed puzzles, but it wouldn’t have been too hard to theme them better.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
For the most part the room design was decent and there was a good flow to the layout which gave the feeling of actually escaping from the serial killer’s lair. Unlike many rooms of this theme there was actually some ‘homely’ touches that made it feel like the killer actually had interests outside of killing people.
For me, where the room lost some immersion is when we had a search fail and couldn’t find the last thing we needed to escape. To try and find it I went back to the closet we started in and for some reason the door we came in through was wide open. The GM did say that for safety it would never be locked, but I wasn’t expecting to see it open. I could have just escaped that way!
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
The GM was good and had clues ready to go just in case we needed them and if we did, they were delivered almost instantly via a screen in the room. Unlike The Compactor you can have clues right from the start, but like that room you are also limited on how many you can have. There are ways to earn more clues but you won’t know how until you’ve earned them – we didn’t earn any.
It’s a small thing but I like it when you escape a room and the GM is there to meet you to congratulate you on your success at not dying. When we escaped this room we spent a few moments standing there wondering what to do, meanwhile the GM was still sat at his station in reception, it’s small but it takes away that feeling of completion as you end the experience with confusion.
ANYTHING ELSE
It’s worth pointing out that this rooms involves crawling in a couple of places so those with mobility issues may struggle with getting around.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Operation | |
Puzzles | |
Room Design | |
GM/Clues | |
Excitement |
Team: 2 players (escaped in around 36mins)
Address: Unit 3, Town Walk, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 2AD
Website: https://www.escape60.co.uk
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