Locked In Edinburgh: Distillery (Edinburgh)

Authentic!

Delve into the depths of modern day Summerhall, a cultural center for arts and alcohol lovers alike! We’ve partnered up with our neighbours at Pickering’s Gin to create a challenging and immersive experience- Locked in the Distillery.

Your mission here is to uncover the identity of the disgruntled employee plotting against the Distillery, find out what they’re up to, save yourself and save the gin!

We’d played a few games at Locked In Edinburgh a few days earlier when we’d been in town to play Secret Lab, Space Academy, and The Cutting Room but we had run out of time to play the last game there, Distillery. Having just got back to Edinburgh from a couple of nights in Glasgow and we had time for one more game before our flight home, so we made sure that we booked in for Distillery.

It was a typically rainy Scottish day when we made our way across town and to the oh so familiar entrance to Locked In Edinburgh, where we were met by our host Nickolai. Unlike our last few visits to Locked In, this time we headed across the courtyard and found ourselves walking past and then up above an actual working distillery! This room was made in collaboration with Pickering’s Gin, it’s just a shame we didn’t have time before our flight to partake in some of their creations.

Nickolai delivered our health and safety briefing outside the room, in the hallway and then once we entered the room (and knew what things not to touch to disrupt the actual brewery downstairs) he gave us our mission briefing – which was basically to work out who was the disgruntled employee and save the gin! We’ve saved a lot of people/planets/missions in the past, but I think this was the first time saving gin! Mission accepted.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

I’ve visited a few distilleries in my time and thanks to Pickering’s Gin supplying some of the equipment this room has an authentic feel filled with lots of copper items that looked like they’d still make some decent alcohol.

Another nice feature of Distillery was the lighting, it had a very clinical feel to it with white tiles everywhere and very bright industrial lighting. No issues at all seeing what we needed in here. Not only were the visuals good but the audio was too, with ambient noises being piped in to make it feel like we were in a real working distillery (and really we weren’t far off being in one).

There’s not really much else to say about this room. It felt authentic and we as a team of two had plenty of space to move around without getting in each other’s way. Larger teams could struggle in places but really I think the room was big enough that you’d be able to spread out.

Accessibility could be an issue for this room. The room itself felt pretty good to move around but I don’t recall seeing a lift, although the other area did so probably worth checking with Locked In to see if there is a way to get to it avoiding stairs.

PUZZLES

What was nice about Distillery was that it was quite non-linear, this meant that we could split up and work on different things simultaneously (probably why we got out quite quickly) – also good for larger teams so there’s less standing around watching someone solve a puzzle.

I think it’s safe to say that Distillery is one of the easier offerings at Locked In Edinburgh (especially when compared to the likes of Secret Lab), so this would be a great choice for less experienced teams or those who just want an easy ride.

The puzzles were plentiful and varied and mostly resulted in codes for padlocks (of many different varieties). Although perhaps not the most challenging of puzzles, they were still varied; observation, searching, colours, attention to detail and directions formed the bulk of the puzzles, and this game also had two possible endings depending on choices made.

Liz correctly identified the guilty parties.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I think we gave Nickolai an easy right with this game so I don’t recall what/if any clues we actually needed, but Nickolai was enthusiastic and gave us a wonderfully thorough debrief after the game.

If we had needed clues they would have been displayed on a TV screen in the room and accompanied by an audio tone.

ANYTHING ELSE

The mission with this game is to identify the guilty party, and I can 100% say that we would have failed this without Liz. I am terrible at story but fortunately Liz seemed to know what was going on – phew. Not the most challenging of games but still no less fun. I’m glad we left this game to last as it was nice to finish on a game that was just good clean fun.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – 29:48

Address: 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Website: https://www.lockedinedinburgh.com