LevelUp Escape Rooms: Mission: Abducted (Shrewsbury)

Space-y Fun!

Venturing down a desolate lane, your mission takes a shocking turn: your car stalls, and an overwhelming burst of energy engulfs you. In a flash, you find yourselves imprisoned in the cold, metallic cells of an unidentified alien spacecraft.

Time is slipping away. Strange, otherworldly technology hums around you, and the fate of Shrewsbury – and perhaps all of humanity – hangs in the balance. Your mission is clear: collect as many alien cores as possible to thwart the invasion and escape before it’s too late. Will you escape the ship and stop the invasion, or will Shrewsbury fall to the stars?

For our visit to LevelUp in Shrewsbury, we’d teamed up with our friend, and fellow blogger, Amy (from Brit of an Escape Habit). Having heard a lot of good things about LevelUp we decided to tackle all of their games, back to back.

We had already successfully solved the mystery of Mystery Manor, and helped the war effort in Operation: Overload. So next up was Mission Abducted. Assuming we didn’t remain abducted, next up after this was the jewel in the LevelUp crown, The Shrewsbury Express.

It’s probably quite obvious what the theme for this game was, but still we went in knowing next to nothing about this game.

For this game, we got a new GM, Nathan. Nathan is also one of the owners at LevelUp so needless to say we had plenty of chatting before and after about all things escape rooms and their plans for the future.

We could have chatted for hours, but of course we had a mission at hand – we had to save Shrewsbury! Nathan gave us the mission briefing and then it was down to business.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Despite what many may think, I’ve not actually spent too much time on spaceships so I can’t comment on the authenticity of this room. But what I can say is that it was very different to what I was expecting, and felt almost clinical – perhaps like an alien Botox clinic?

The first thing that’s worth mentioning for Mission: Abducted is that this is a split-start game, so you’ll need to decide who goes on which side. Due to one of our team being a bit challenged by colours, we decided that Liz would go solo, and I would team up with Amy.

The spaces in this game were cosy, but we still didn’t get in each other’s way. So I think bigger teams (not huge teams) would be ok too. Each space felt connected to the previous but with distinctly different puzzle types.

The new spaces we found as we explored the spacecraft were of mixed sizes, both bigger and smaller, and I think for at least one room, accessibility would be an issue.

PUZZLES

Knowing that this is a split start game, you’ll already have guessed that at least early on, this game relies heavily on communication and teamwork. Outside of that: searching, observation, decoding, pattern recognition, maths (basic) and logic fill up the rest of the game.

All of the puzzles were on theme and nothing felt overly out of place. There were padlocks present, but being a spaceship, there was a good amount of tech used too.

Signposting was spot on and we always knew what went where. It’s amazing how good signposting can really change the feel of a game. I don’t recall ever having a code for a padlock and having to try it on lots of padlocks (always an annoyance).

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Nathan was a great GM, and he clearly practises what he preaches when it comes to training his wonderful games masters. His briefing was enthusiastic, and clues were perfectly timed to get us back on track.

Liz has a great habit of overcomplicating puzzles (actually, we both do), so when either of us is in a room by ourselves, it can cause issues if we’re just not seeing something and don’t have another person to bounce ideas off. Fortunately, Nathan was on the ball and got us back on track without too much frustration.

Clues were over television screens in this game, and they were always clear enough to get us back on track, while being cryptic enough to not simply spoon-feed us the answer.

ANYTHING ELSE

Mission: Abducted had everything you’d expect to see in a spaceship themed game, and I’m pleased to say we did save Shrewsbury.

Puzzles were fun, and hosting was spot on as always. This was probably the most challenging game of all we played at LevelUp, but a good type of challenging.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 3 players

Address: Unit SU33, Middle Level, Darwin Shopping Centre, Shrewsbury SY1 1BW

Website: https://levelupescapes.com