Pier Pressure Bracknell: Prison Break (Bracknell)

Fun, behind bars!

Time moves slowly at HMP Bracknell, where every day feels like an eternity.

But fear not! You and your trusted friends won’t spend ten long years in this unjust imprisonment for a crime you didn’t commit.

Armed with nothing more than your sharp intellects and unwavering determination, join forces to outsmart the guards and embark on a daring Prison Break to reclaim your freedom!

As the clock ticks relentlessly, the stakes are higher than ever in this heart-pounding race for salvation.

It had been nearly six years since we were last at this venue, and in that time a major change has taken place. When we were last here, it was run by a company called Puzzalogical, but recently the whole company was taken over by Pier Pressure – yes, of Brighton fame. Pier Pressure have a great reputation so we were interested to see if they could bring that Brighton flair to Bracknell.

Prison Break was actually our second game of the day, a day when we were playing all four of the games that were currently open; The Siege of Spellbreak Bank, Prison Break, Alien Encounter, and Pharoah’s Mystery – what a great day! We had planned the day pretty well so there was minimal downtime between the games, but as we were a little quicker in Spellbreak Bank, we did have a little time to kill. Fortunately the staff were lovely and let us hang out in the waiting room downstairs until Prison Break was ready for us.

The waiting room is a comfortable place to wait, even if it is in the basement, with toilets, lockers, and water on stand-by. Our host for Prison Break was Alicia. When it was time, Alicia gave us a quick introduction and then pressed a button on a wall which started a video mission and health and safety briefing on the TV. When that was complete, ‘Regular’ Alicia had disappeared and was suddenly replaced with ‘Prison Officer’ Alicia. She escorted us down the hallway and then locked us in our cells (two of us in each cell) – there was an emergency exit button to get us out of the cells if needed.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

I’m quite pleased to say that I’ve not ‘done time’ so I can really comment on how authentic this room was. But, it did have the key things one would expect; concrete, bars, lack of colour, and locks. Not a pleasant space to be, but it did what it was supposed to.

The space that Prison Break took place in was quite contained, and I wouldn’t have wanted to have played with more than the four players that we did. Most of the set was on show from the start, albeit viewed from your cell, but there were some extra spaces to explore.

One member of your team will need to be able to crawl, but other than that the game was quite accessible and took place all on one level. Once that team member has done the crawling, they can open up an easier way through for the rest of the team.

PUZZLES

Puzzles were the usual prison break types and all revolved around things you’d expect to find in a jail, be that from the prisoner or the prison officer side. Being a split start game it’s no surprise that you will need to communicate with your teammates early on if you want to earn your freedom.

Other than communication; teamwork, logic, searching, wordplay, and observation make up the bulk of the remaining puzzles. Solving the puzzles generally resulted in codes for padlocks, or obtaining a key. Although annoyingly at one point we retrieved a key that worked in two different locks which slowed us down a bit.

I think, being a split start game, I would have liked to have seen more of a reliance on teamwork at the start. There were a few puzzles that had us working together from our cells, but not as many as perhaps one would expect.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our host for Prison Break was Alicia, who did a good job. I don’t recall ever actively asking for help, but there were a couple of moments where she chimed in over the speaker system to clarify something and stop us going off on a tangent – mostly when I had found that a key worked in a different location to where it was supposed to be used, instead of the other (obvious) location.

ANYTHING ELSE

This is a game that won’t be a standout for many players, but the puzzles were fair and we had an enjoyable time. It felt like our experience ended a bit anti-climacticly, and also rather abruptly, but maybe I missed something of the story?

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players (escaped in 32:13)

Address: Easthampstead House, Town Square, Bracknell, RG12 1BH

Website: https://pierpressure.co.uk/bracknell