Knockout Escape Rooms: Locktopus (Reading)

A game for enthusiasts, by enthusiasts. Thinking caps on!

For years, rumours have spread about a rogue AI; a creature of code and curiosity – calling itself The Locktopus.

Now it has invited you into its chamber of challenges. An hour to prove yourself. Seventy-four tests contained within eight puzzle strands. Solve four strands, and you may escape… but the more you conquer, the higher your score, and the deeper you dive into the Locktopus’s tangled mind.

This is not a normal game. This is a battle of wits against something built to outthink you.

Will you impress it? Or will you be forgotten like the others who failed?

Reading used to be a mecca for escape rooms, but sadly the number of companies there is slowly dwindling. Deadlocked, Knockout and Escape Reading, are three of our favourites in the town and are fortunately still going (hopefully) strong. It’s always exciting when a company you love opens a new game, but it always feels like a long wait for them to appear. The last new game we played in Reading was The Reading Witch by Deadlocked which was definitely worth the wait. The next new game was a bit of a hybrid as it’s located at Knockout, but Deadlocked and Knockout are now run by the same team, so it’s Knockout but with a very healthy dose of Deadlocked.

We arrived at the slightly out of town Knockout venue (a short walk from the main station) and once we ascended the stairs and entered the spacious waiting room, we were greeted by our host, James. We stored away our personal items and then received the mission briefing, which further reminded us of the key line in this game’s description “this is not a normal game”.

So with our heads firmly rattled and a suitably octopussy-punned team name entered, we crossed the threshold into the realm of the Locktopus.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

If you’ve played at Knockout before, particularly their old room called 9-5 Assassin, then you’ll be familiar with the footprint, as the Locktopus takes place in the same area. That’s not to say it’s 100% the same footprint, they’ve somehow managed to fit in some surprises.

I was looking at some of our older reviews for games at Deadlocked (like The Time Machine) and one of the things we admired was how they showed that you can take every day items and with the right skills and attention to detail, you can fit them into an escape room and have them just belong. That same level of attention to ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ has once again shown through in the Locktopus, and we mean that in a good way, and not at all as a complaint. I found it to be like a little side mission for me, working out what some of the items on the wall used to be in a former life.

Of course, there’s only so much one can do with recycled goods, and the touch-screen TV at the centre of the room is very much the focal point. As we entered the room I casually threw out a “What size is that TV?!” question to James just as he was leaving, and the simple response I got as the door closed was ‘BIG’ – he wasn’t wrong! I initially thought it was a large TV simply to be impressive, but actually thinking about it, this is a game that revolves around that screen, and as the game can handle teams of 6 people, you want everyone to see what is going on.

It’s been said before, but this is not your normal escape room, and it definitely won’t be for everyone. But what was interesting is that this is one of those games where we would actively recommend playing with a larger team, even up to the maximum. There is a lot to do in this game, and a lot to look at, think about and solve. Hell, they even say it in the description “seventy-four tests” – that means 74 puzzles, and we were nowhere near solving them all.

The game obviously has its core objective, which is where you need to escape (don’t worry, you can leave through an unopened door at any time), but outside of the core objective there are a lot of optional puzzles you can do to boost your final score. Oh and there are stats, lots of stats, and little awards you can get for how well you play.

PUZZLES

Normally an escape room game has perhaps 12/13 puzzles, although I could be mistaken and it depends what is counted as a puzzle. As I said, Locktopus has 74 (and I’m sure they’ll probably keep adding more). There are eight puzzle strands to explore, and the good thing is, if you aren’t a fan of a certain type of puzzle, you can just skip that strand entirely and work on what you want. We didn’t realise, but we completely avoided one strand all together – whoops.

Even though this game has ‘Lock’ in the title, you will not find any padlocks anywhere. This game is full of tech, but there are a number of things that have physical interactions for you to solve. Generally solving a puzzle would give you a code, word, sequence, or anything else you can think of that could be entered into a digital console. When codes were entered correctly you were given feedback immediately as to whether it was correct or not.

So trying to summarise 74 puzzles into one paragraph, what can you find? Searching (very minor really), observation, logic, audio, decoding, communication, teamwork, and colours (more on that shortly). If there’s a puzzle type you like, there’s a good chance you’ll find it in this game, and if there’s one you don’t like, just skip it and move on to something else.

The game also has a scalable difficulty and there are subtle changes to things as you progress through it to keep you on your toes. We had a thorough debrief after our game, and there was a lot we still had left to do, and so much that we didn’t appreciate at the time. It feels like they’ve done some reading on human psychology when designing this game as the amount of considerations for player experience is something we’ve not really seen before.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our host was James, the creator of Locktopus so he knows it better than anyone else, and it showed. Our briefing was as dynamic as you’d expect from someone who also works as an actor, and our debrief was as thorough and passionate as you’d expect from someone who sees this game as their baby.

We were not on top form when we visited this cephalopod so we needed a good amount of help, or it felt like we did (officially we only had one hint). Any help we needed came quickly from a disembodied voice and it was generally enough to get us back on track in no time.

We don’t actually have a section for accessibility and it’s something that could fit into many different areas, but I’m going to include it here. It’s quite well known that one half of Review the Room has issues with colours, and historically there have been games that haven’t been enjoyed as half of it wasn’t accessible. The Locktopus however, has a colour blind mode! This is something that can be toggled on or off at ease by the GM, and I can confirm that it makes a huge difference! Suddenly colour puzzles are only a challenge because of the puzzle, not because of the colour <insert happy tears here>. Even items in the game that can’t be toggled on or off have labels to assist those who are rainbowy challenged. If I remember correctly, I would say that there was only one puzzle where it was a challenge to identify colours, but with so many other puzzles to choose from, it can just be skipped.

ANYTHING ELSE

This is not your typical escape room. It is very high-tech and revolves around a large central screen. It is however a game made by an enthusiast, for enthusiasts – it is a puzzle-fest! If you’re familiar with the works of James Hamer-Morton (Deadlocked live and online games, and many escape room books), then playing the Locktopus is a scary insight into how his brain works.

I imagine it may be a marmite game where players love or hate it. Liz said “I didn’t hate it”, and as she doesn’t like ‘collection’ games, that’s actually a complement. I actually really enjoyed it, and the more I think about it, the more I think I want to replay it to try and get through more puzzles. The love/hate aspect makes rating this game challenging, but for sheer quantity of content, and how different this game feels to other offerings, we think it deserves top marks.

If you’re near Reading and looking for a corporate escape room game to play, then you should seriously consider The Locktopus. This is not a typical escape room and it will challenge, and push your team for sure. Break up into teams and then see which team gets the highest score – this is a game that you will not run out of things to do!

Success/Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – achieved a score of 11,196

Address: 75 Milford Rd, Reading RG1 8LG

Website: https://knockoutescaperooms.com/

*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for these tickets, but this has not influenced our review*