Locked In Glasgow: Ghost Hunters (Glasgow)

Who you gonna call?

A tragedy has struck the family of a former Ghosthunter and an evil spirit has been unleashed on Glasgow.

Are you ready to uncover what happened to the family and lay their spirits to rest?

Peter Verner has turned his apartment into a ghost-summoning laboratory.

Challenges await you where you’ll need to understand the experiments that took place, the spirits that have awoken and how to save the city.

We need a team of Ghosthunters with cunning, intellect and the courage to take on the undead.

Who are we gonna call? We’ve called you!

We’d already played Glasgow School of Magic, Doll’s House, and Bloodlines at Locked In Glasgow, but the one game that I was looking forward to the most was our next game, Ghost Hunters. The Locked In Glasgow website does show this game as a minimum of three players, but we asked nicely (begged) and they let us play as a two. From what we could see, there is nothing in this game that stops you playing as a duo.

This game was actually later than our other games at this venue so between games we went for a little stroll and then returned to the now familiar fifth floor (there is a lift). However, after waiting in the 5th floor waiting room, we then had to descend to the 2nd floor where Ghost Hunters is located. Fortunately our GM, Fraser, escorted us down so we didn’t get lost.

We had a bit of a chat with Fraser and then he disappeared to check on the room. When he reappeared he was in a hi-viz jacket and in character. He took us into the room and then proceeded to give us our briefings. After the briefings, we were on our room and Fraser once again made himself scarce. It was time to hunt some ghosts!

Quickly talking about accessibility, this game felt to me like it was probably the most accessible of all of the games at this venue. The floor space was massive, and there were no steps to overcome. As always, if you have any accessibility concerns it’s always worth checking with the venue.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

First impressions of Ghost Hunters were good. The first room we entered was certainly sizable (which is probably why they recommend a team of three as a minimum), in fact all spaces we encountered had plenty of room to swing a cat. It was actually quite overwhelming at the start as there were plenty of things to look at and explore, and it was quite difficult to know what was part of the game and what was simply set dressing.

As you would expect from a room called ‘Ghost Hunters’, there were a few nods to Ghost Busters. Although to be honest, I would like to have seen more – but that could just be because I’m a child of the 80s. Another gripe, but this is very much a personal thing, is that the room was just too quiet. I love a room with music playing to ramp up the adrenaline, but Ghost Hunters was lacking that and it really felt like they missed a trick there to blast in some 80s music.

PUZZLES

The first puzzle in Ghost Hunters is, like I said, working out what is a puzzle and what is simply set dressing. There are A LOT of items in this room and I’m pretty sure we touched them all at some point.

The room played out in a mostly non-linear manner but certain things did have to be done in order so that did push things along in a certain direction. There was however a good mixture of tech and padlocks. The puzzles that we encountered involved; searching, observation, following directions, decoding, logic, colours, and a little ghost busting.

I must say, of all the puzzles, the last one was our favourite. It could have been much much better but it was still a nice bit of whimsy to end the game.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Generally speaking we seemed to be on the right wavelength for games at Locked In Glasgow as for most of the games we didn’t need any clues – that was the same for Ghost Hunters too. After our game we spoke with Fraser and found out that if we did need any clues they would have come over the speaker system from him in the control room.

Fraser was a solid GM and gave us a good welcome and a nicely thorough debrief, although as we needed no help he had a pretty easy shift with us! There was also a timer counting down how long we had left, but I’m not sure we ever really felt rushed.

ANYTHING ELSE

This game has so much potential. It’s a big space, with good puzzles and some fun moments, but for me it needed a bit more atmosphere and I feel like they should have pushed harder on the ghostbusters connection (copyright allowing of course).

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – 38:05

Address: Central Chambers, 93 Hope St, Glasgow G2 6LD

Website: https://escaperoomglasgow.com