Omescape: The Joker (London)

Black is the new black

Your group need to find him before he finds you… After years of performing in the circus, the Joker retreated into madness, creating a mysterious asylum with the help of his doctor. As time went by people forgot about the Joker, but suddenly one day he decided to leave the asylum and carry out a revenge plot. The only person who has any insight into the dangerous mind of the Joker is his doctor – but he has also mysteriously disappeared. Your task is to unravel the mystery and work as a rescue team on a mission, before the Joker finds out you’re onto him.

Our first experience with Omescape and turning up at this dodgy looking building just north of King’s Cross did nothing to put our nerves at ease, entering the waiting room did even less for that! Omescape have bought in to the concept that black never goes out of fashion, or they bought black paint in bulk on sale, either way, this place is dark.

Unusually for us we did this room as a team of six which for some reason always feels like too many people to me, but for this room, it was the right amount. You start the room with a split team, we had two in one room and four in the other, using on walkie-talkies you have to communication to work out how to escape.

There is no doubt about it, this room is hard and definitely not one for novices. We escaped with a decent time but from speaking with the GM afterwards that sounds like more of an exception to the norm. If you’re team isn’t hot on communication then don’t even bother attempting this.

The room Liz and I started in was very baron with not much to go on, but after a few minutes of looking around and playing with everything we could find (as did the other room) we soon started to piece things together and make progress.

This place is like a bit of a maze with room after room which was nice to see, and there was one bit which we thought was a particularly cool bit of set design. Unfortunately though this room was suffering severely from fatigue meaning some things were far more obvious than they should have been.  With some investment in to making the rooms look new again, this would have been a much better experience.

PUZZLES

The puzzles in this room were hard, especially early on where you have to rely on communication through bloody awful walkie-talkies. Once you get past the first room things start to get a bit more traditional and fun, so just bare with it. One of the puzzles was very time consuming and we had two team members who were full time working on that while the rest of us got on with other things.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

There were some nice aspects to the room design, but generally a dark room with darkened lights can get away with a lot more than lighter rooms could. They did a really good job of creating that labyrinth-esque feel and there was plenty to keep us occupied. Other than the room looking tired, it was a good room with good design.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Clues were delivered via a screen when you requested them.  The GM was attentive, although at times rather creepy (on theme?) and seemed to be keeping an eye on our progress.

ANYTHING ELSE

This is hard room so we’d recommend only doing it with an experienced team who have a good level of communication. Also, try not to be creeped out by the GM, we assume he’s not normally like that, right?

Success / Failure

Final Rating: 

Team: 6 people

Address: Omescape, Carnegie Street, London, N1 9QW

Website: https://omescapelondon.co.uk