Lock & Code: Dead on the Hour (Taunton)

A dark, but not scary room

On the track of a killer you hunt him down to a small study, you enter. Hours later you come around chained to the wall with a clock counting down. It seems you have one hour before… well let’s not find out.

There really aren’t many escape room companies in Somerset so we were rather pleased when we saw that Lock and Code were opening a venue in Taunton. We’d already done a few of their rooms in Weston-Super-Mare (all solid rooms), so hoped this room would be decent.

Our first challenge was finding the venue; they say it is Taunton but it’s actually a little outside in a lovely village called Creech St Michael. Located in an old papermill it can be a little tricky to find so we spent a bit of time driving around – FYI it’s located in ‘Unit N,’ next to County Hardwoods, so just head there.

Lock and Code have big plans for this venue so it’s currently a work in progress and wisely they have spent their time on the room rather than the area surrounding it. Once we entered the venue we were greeted by our GM, Tom and his assistant, and we’re guided to the comfortable waiting area where we were given our briefing.

With the briefing out of the way we were taken to the room, the well named ‘Dead on the Hour’. The room was only illuminated by the countdown monitor so it was very dark. Tom shackled us to the wall and we were left alone to escape before the serial killer returned.

PUZZLES

Firstly, as you’d probably expect from a serial killer’s lair, this was a padlock heavy room (fine by us). I particularly enjoyed the first puzzle, obviously it’s getting your shackles off, but I won’t reveal how that’s accomplished.

This is one of those rooms where almost everything is on show from the moment you walk in so it isn’t search heavy and it’s easy to see what needs to be solved.

Often in escape rooms you are told that you use an item once and then discard it. We weren’t told this during our briefing but due to our experience (stupidity) we wrongly assumed this was the case, so don’t be so quick to discard items in this room like we did.

We were flying through the early part of this room and thought we were going to be out in no time at all, then the room threw us a curve-ball that we didn’t see coming and we slowed down. A lot.

We really struggled on one puzzle, but apparently many people struggle on this one so it may be tweaked to make it a bit easier in the future; it has already had a couple of revisions so it’s good to see Lock and Code are listening to feedback.

This room builds up to one big final puzzle that took us a while to solve, but was well thought out and we’d have been fine if we just trusted our instincts on it.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

There was nothing special about this room’s design and certainly nothing that would blow you away, but it fitted the theme perfectly as it contained everything you’d expect to find in a study.

We thought we had this room sussed, although we knew one part of the room would come into play somehow, we didn’t expect it to in the way it did, and it added a nice element to the game which gave it a much more sinister feel.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Clues and your time were via a screen in the room. Our GM, Tom could see when we were struggling and gave us perfectly timed nudges/clues. We never actually asked for a clue, but he could see when we were stuck and chimed in appropriately.

ANYTHING ELSE

Lock and Code may not have the latest tech or swanky premises but they produce decent rooms that are fun to play. Our rankings always factor in the staff and our interactions with them, and on three separate visits to Lock and Code we’ve always been impressed.

According to Tom they are planning to open eight four rooms (Matt the owner corrected this) at this location in Taunton. Eight looks like it would be a tight squeeze but we look forward to seeing what they do next and we’ll certainly be in the next time we’re in town to check out their new offerings.

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: Two players – escaped in 42:41 with two or three clues

Address: Unit N, Creech St Michael Paper Mill, Mill Lane, Taunton, Somerset, TA3 5PX

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