Ready Escape Rooms: Escape the Vault (Brighton)

Our quickest ever escape!

Hidden inside Presuming Ed’s Coffee House, is one of Brighton’s oldest bank vaults. It is now Brighton’s newest Escape Room. Be hired to rob the vault of world renowned arms dealer, Charles Fawkley.

We’d heard about ’Escape The Vault’ through Twitter but other than that it had mostly gone under our radar. With a bank holiday weekend approaching it seemed like a good time to head down to Brighton to check out this room (and a few others, of course).

This is only a 40 minute room and they do say on their website that “This is an entry level escape room, ideal for those who want a first escape room experience, but is also entertaining for escape room veterans.” We weren’t expecting much and decided to treat this room like a warm up for the other ‘full length’ rooms that we were doing that day.

The aim of this mission is to get into the vault, solve the puzzles and then gain access to a gold safe in the room which contains an account number that you need to retrieve and message to Terrence; do that within 40 minutes and you’ve completed your mission, fail and the police will provide a taxi.

This room has been quite tricky to rate as it’s a different concept to other rooms we have done, it’s shorter, states it’s an entry level room, and it’s cheap (REALLY cheap). So we’ve made this a bit of a stand alone review and the scores we’ve given it factor in everything, including price, so you can’t really compare it to other rooms we’ve given the same rating to.

PUZZLES

The puzzles for this room start even before you get in the room. The first challenge is deactivating the lasers and unlocking the door, it’s a nice touch though that the time doesn’t begin until the lasers are deactivated.

All the puzzles in the room fitted in with the theme and it was not a linear room so we were able to divide and conquer and work on different things at the same time.

This game won’t blow you away with complex puzzles and if you don’t like padlocks then you’ll hate this room as that is pretty much all you’ll find, but the puzzles are all logical and as a beginners rooms it is perfect to help people understand the idea of escape rooms and hopefully get them hooked.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The biggest selling point for this game is that it is located in a real old bank vault (the coffee shop used to be a HSBC) so it was nice to see that they stayed true to the venue and didn’t try and make it a pirate room or something equally out of place.

Ok, so the design of the room is simple at best with padlocks everywhere but if this was really a private bank vault for a gangster wouldn’t you expect a few padlocks?

The puzzles in the room and the items that lead you to them are all things you could expect to find in a vault so once again it felt right.

I’m not sure if it was our haste to get out but we weren’t sure if we had finished, we watched the video and as the timer was still running we were a bit confused if we should leave or not. I gather from Dan that this was potentially a glitch and the timer normally stops once the video is played.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

This is where the room gets a bit different and depending how things go it could make or break the room for you. We were fortunate to have one of the owners, Dan, on site for our game but usually this isn’t the case and the room is ‘run’ by the coffee shop staff.

You will need a phone with WhatsApp installed as this is how you will get your clues. Your get away driver, Terrance, is there to send you helpful messages if you get stuck but as the entire system is automated you can’t deviate from the structured format for help requests.

We didn’t need any clues so can’t comment on how well this did or didn’t work but assuming it runs as planned then we can’t see any issues with it.

Because there is no GM it means you are not monitored in the room at all, no cameras to see you and no mics to hear you, but you are never locked in and can come and go as you please.

Arguably the worst thing about not having a GM is that when you finish you don’t get that high of someone congratulating you and giving the room closure, I believe you just go to the baristas when you’re done. If you don’t complete it it could be frustrating not having someone be able to explain the room.

ANYTHING ELSE

This is a 40 minute room that probably won’t challenge enthusiasts (we got out in 12 minutes) but it is a whole lot of fun and we thoroughly enjoyed it. If you go into this room and treat it as a warm up room then you’ll be fine, but don’t expect it to blow your socks off.

The guys at Ready Escape Rooms have put together a lovely little room and are trying something different with how it is run, it’s risky but it worked for us. They know what they have and they know what else is in Brighton and they aren’t trying to compete, this is a room that should be added to your Brighton visit as a warm up or cool down for a day of rooms, and that is how they’ve priced it.

We did this room as a two and were kept busy for 12 minutes, but we really wouldn’t go bigger than four enthusiasts as you’ll blitz it. You can even do this room solo for £12!

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: Two players – escaped in around 12 minutes with no clues

Address: Presuming Ed’s,115-116 London Road, Brighton, BN14LJ

Website: https://escapethevault.co.uk

*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for these tickets, but this has not influenced our review.