Mythologic: Needlenose (Gillingham)

Perfect for Halloween (and the rest of the year too)

Your worst fear just became a reality, there is a copycat killer clown in town, he has been taking people down into the sewers and they don’t return, are you brave enough to find out what’s going on down there?

Our over 18s live actor game, fight for your life and escape before he takes you too.

I had to go back to our notes to see when we last played a game by Mythologic (Hypnos and The Game, January 2020, just three short months before the world shut down. It looks like Mythologic had been busy though as they had opened up a new venue and a few more games to boot! All I did over lockdown was put on weight.

We were on a Kent Escape Room weekend with our good friends Amy and Ian from Brit of an Escape Habit and Mythologic was the second stop, where we were going to play Needlenose and Mr Todds. I must admit, I went into these games not really knowing much about them but we had high hopes after our previous trip to this company.

After a good catch up with the owner (and our GM) Chris, we stashed our items in the lockers and then headed to the entrance for Needlenose. It’s worth noting that this is a horror experience and has a live actor – although we found that despite there being an actor present, he never really interfered with our game, nor us. He was more there for a few jump scares.

Anyway, outside of the room we received our briefing on what we were there to do. Basically go into the sewers and work out what is going on with this copycat killer – because that seems like a great idea…

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

I particularly enjoyed the journey in this room, from the street and then down into the sewers – it was nice to not just go through a door and ‘boom’ you’re in the sewers. As I mentioned earlier, this game technically has a live actor element although I believe this can be toned down if you’re particularly skittish, but even as it was we didn’t find it impeded us too much.

I’ve not been into too many sewers in my life, but the ones I have (or seen on TV) all shared one thing, darkness. This is a dark room but there was some low level lighting and torches were also provided. A little bugbear of ours is not having enough torches for each team member, and as a team of four we only had two torches. I’d like to think if we were actual investigators that we’d be sensible enough to take a torch each. I assume this was done to force us to work together and add to the scare factor.

In terms of build quality, this game felt like a step up on the earlier games we’d played by Mythologic, that’s not to say the earlier games were poor, this just felt like the next step up for them. Everything in this game was designed to give you the eerie vibe that something wasn’t right, even down to the atmospheric noises in the space.

Despite this being set in a sewer, the game was surprisingly accessible. There was a short flight of steps to get to the game entrance and then just a couple of steps in the game, but nothing too challenging.

PUZZLES

The first thing we do when we leave an escape room is to take down detailed notes about the game so that we can write accurate reviews. I was reviewing our notes for this game and the first thing I have for ‘puzzles’ is “I dunno, Amy solved them” – and that is pretty much spot on. The first part of this game was the ‘Amy show’, it was impressive to behold. Of course we then made sure to speak with Amy to find out exactly what we missed.

The lighting was a challenge, but it was never too frustrating (even with the lack of torches). Outside of that, you’ll find the usual puzzle types, generally fitting into the theme/surroundings; observation, searching, colour, decoding, logic, physical, so a bit of everything really!

One observation puzzle was particularly sneaky (read clever) and it was quite satisfying to solve it. However, another puzzle felt a little ambiguous to us and stumped us for a while, although looking back on it now, I think there’s a chance we were just being a bit dim and it’s probably a fair puzzle.

The game was quite multilinear which was good for our team of four experienced players, although there were choke points where we all came back together to solve something and move through the game.

Needlenose had a blend of tech and padlocks, so sometimes it was quite apparent what we needed (a four digit code etc), while other times we may be interacting with something without quite knowing what would happen next.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

No sensible person would go into a sewer, with a killer on the loose, without having help on the outside – and fortunately we had assistance. If we needed any assistance, we simply had to radio through to Chris using our walkie-talkies and he’d be sure to help us out. I believe we only had one radio message from him and that was to reassure us that we were on the right track with the ambiguous/not-ambiguous puzzle.

ANYTHING ELSE

I’m not normally a huge fan of horror/live-actor escape rooms as they seem to just be dark for the sake of it, but Needlenose was good fun and had a good sense of adventure. In terms of set design and build, it felt like a step up from their earlier games and I’d imagine this is a very popular game around the scary season!

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players – escaped in 29:44

Address: 41-43 Canterbury Street, Gillingham, ME7 5TR

Website: https://mythologicescaperooms.co.uk