Locked In Edinburgh: The Secret Lab (Edinburgh)

A LOT of work/puzzling!

The year is 1972 and Summerhall is home to The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. Advancements in medicine have never been so progressive and revolutionary. Whilst in such uncertain times a secretive lab at Summerhall is created.

The lab known as the Kensie Research Lab or the ‘Secret Lab’ was a marvel of the 70’s with technology that no one could ever imagine. It contained the very best equipment money could buy and a group of scientists whose work would go down in history. The genius in charge of the lab was Dr. Lyall Kensie, a brilliant bio-chemist, specialising in virus’ and disease. His experiments were groundbreaking, his ideas were radical but not everything played out how he had hoped.

Do you have what it takes to discover the secrets that he was working on and help save Edinburgh.

We’d been wanting to head to Scotland to play some escape rooms for a while but we could never make it work. Fortunately, some cheap flights appeared and we managed to make a plan for three nights in Scotland to take in the best escape rooms that Edinburgh and Glasgow had to offer (and some fine Scottish beers too).

The first venue on our trip, and a game that was booked for not long after our flight landed, was The Secret Lab by Locked In Edinburgh. This venue is a bit of an odd one in that it takes place in a very bohemian area that was filled with art installations, a cafe, and other things that were ummm..interesting. Still, it was a cool area to waste some time in and a great location for an escape room – from what I recall it’s in a building that used to be a Veterinary school.

The escape room venue itself doesn’t have toilets but the main building does, so it’s probably worth using the facilities before you check in for your game. When we arrived there was a QR code by the door that instructed us to scan it and then wait for our GM to appear – they seem quite rigid on arriving five minutes early.

After scanning the code, and at pretty much exactly five minutes before our game, we were greeted downstairs by our GM for The Secret Lab, Felix. Felix guided us up the stairs and around some corridors and then stopped outside the entrance for The Secret Lab. There was a lift to the building but I have no idea if this was working – if it was then I think The Secret Lab would be an accessible room, but definitely worth checking if this is important for you.

We’d heard that The Secret Lab was a handful for a team of two, and we’d seen that other bloggers had tried and failed, but we’re idiots so why not start our Scottish break with possibly the hardest game?

Outside The Secret Lab, Felix gave us the health and safety briefing and then disappeared only for a new person to arrive to give us the mission briefing (this new person looked strangely like Felix in a lab coat). ‘Not Felix’ had one more question, did we want an extra puzzle at the start? Hell yes! Apparently this puzzle is normally added for larger teams to give them something extra to do and usually takes around 10 mins. Ok, choosing to do this in a game where we already knew we were going to be tight on time was probably not our smartest decision but we really didn’t want to miss out (humble brag: we did it in 5 mins).

So, with ‘extra puzzle mode’ enabled, it was time to enter the lab. It’s worth noting that this did make our game a split start, but you may not necessarily have this.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

If you’re looking for a game with lots of secret rooms, then this is not the game for you. Pretty much everything is on display right from the start, so you won’t find too many surprises, but just because you can see everything, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can get to everything right away.

After speaking with our GM after the game, it was interesting to learn that The Secret Lab is actually housed in a room that was once the kennels of the veterinary college. Most of the puzzles were located within these kennels which were on the smaller side, but there was still plenty of room to move around and I think larger teams would get on well in this game.

Normally I like to have some form of background noise in a game to help us forget about the outside world, but strangely in The Secret Lab the lack of ambient noise didn’t actually bother me and I can’t remember too many distractions from outside coming in other than the occasion chatter from another team in the hallway.

The flow to this game was decent and thanks to the open nature of the game, and some decent signposting, we never really got stuck for where to go next, and we certainly never ran out of things to do.

PUZZLES

As I previously mentioned, The Secret Lab was a very open game and the majority of the puzzles were non-linear. This was great for us as we could just hop around to different puzzles until something clicked – also perfect for larger teams as everyone can be working on something simultaneously.

We found the signposting to be decent, and once we understood the ‘rules’ of the game, it made it much easier for us to know what went where. The provided notepad and whiteboard made things simpler for jotting down our notes as we went along

This game felt like it was chock full of puzzles, and there was a lot for us to get through as a team of two (especially with the bonus puzzle at the start). It’s probably safe to say that there was something in here for everyone; communication, teamwork, observation, colours, memory, physical, and some cool use of tech.

Just when we thought we were finishing this game, there was more, so much so that we really didn’t think we were going to complete everything in time. This wasn’t helped by one of the latter puzzles that ideally would have needed two players with decent colour vision, but with one of the team lacking that, this became very challenging/laborious and we soon found our motivation for the game dwindling. So it’s worth noting that if anyone on your team is optically challenged when it comes to colours, then you may have issues here and there.

The solutions from the puzzles were used in various ways, some opened padlocks, some triggered tech, and others invited you to simply use tech in a certain way – varied and fun!

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our GM for The Secret Lab was Felix. Felix did a wonderful job of making us feel welcomed, and we had a little time for a lovely chat before and after the game. For the briefings he was in character, and he remained as such until we had fully finished our experience.

I don’t recall a timer in the room, as I’m pretty sure there wasn’t one. This was a 60 minute experience and every minute counts when there are so many puzzles to solve. Despite there being no timer, we did have a rough idea of how long we had left thanks to a claxon that sounded every 10 or so minutes.

If we needed any clues in this game they would have come through a dot matrix printer in the room, that brought back memories! My favourite touch of the game was that when we finished our mission the dot matrix printer then displayed our final completion time – and yes, we were just under the 60 minutes.

ANYTHING ELSE

The Secret Lab was definitely one of my favourite games that we played in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It was basically just one massive puzzle session. So if you’re looking for a game to occupy a large team, or stretch a smaller one, then this could be the game you are looking for.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – 59:47

Address: 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Website: https://www.lockedinedinburgh.com