Last year we wrote an article lazily titled ‘The Best Escape Rooms in the UK in 2021‘, well in the interest of starting a new tradition and giving you a check list for the must-play escape rooms in the UK – here is the 2022 instalment.. The Best Escape Rooms in the UK in 2022, that you must play in 2023!
This magical event comes but once a year, and always in December. No, I’m not talking about Christmas, but of course the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Awards (TERPECAs). For the winners, these awards are an early Christmas present as winning a TERPECA is not an easy thing to do. This year the awards took place on the 17th December and 929 escape rooms were nominated from 38 countries.
So what are the TERPECAs? It’s probably easier that this just comes straight from the team behind it:
The Top Escape Rooms Project is an attempt to find the very best escape rooms in the world by leveraging the experience of the most experienced escape room enthusiasts in the world. We serve escape room owners and designers by publicly recognizing their achievements, and we serve our fellow enthusiasts by providing an international bucket list of the best rooms to play.
The team behind the TERPECA awards are really really clever and have created some very cool (and clever) algorithms that rank games that have been nominated by, and voted for, by escape room enthusiasts. Unlike the likes of TripAdvisor where someone can play one game and declare “This is the best escape room in the world”, in order to nominate games for the TERPECAs enthusiasts have to have played over 200 games, and to vote for games they must have played over 100 games.
You can see the full list of the top 100 winners by visiting the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Awards site, but firstly we’re going to focus on the UK entries. We’re quite proud to say that we’ve played all but one of the games that made it through, and some of these games are really incredible experiences. Congrats to everyone who got nominated especially as it appears to be a shorter list than last year.
- Loot The Lanes – Pier Pressure (Brighton)
- Atlantis – The Escapement (Broadstairs) 🆕
- Wunderwaffe Operation Quartz – The Escapement (Broadstairs) 🆕
- The Comms Room – Escape in the Towers (Canterbury)
- Southern Dis-Comfort – Hounds Escape Game Experiences (Crawley)
- Dodge City – Tulleys Escape Rooms (Crawley)
- Nethercott Manor – Tulleys (Crawley)
- SpellCraft – Tulleys (Crawley)
- Into the Reliquary – Darkmaster (Crowborough)
- Viking – Extremescape (Disley)
- The Mixed-Up Mind of Mr Crabheal – Escape from the Room (Epsom) 🆕
- Project Delta – AI Escape (London)
- Battle for Britain – Escape Plan (London)
- Secret Studio – Escape in Time (London)
- Sherlock: The Game is Now – Hartswood Films / Time Run (London)
- CQorigenes – clueQuest (London)
- Mr Copplestone’s Curiosity Shoppe – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) 🆕
- The Pit – The Escapement (Margate)
- Monuments – Cave Escape (Nottingham)
- Daylight Robbery – Cryptology (Nottingham, UK)
- RMS Titanic – Houdini’s (Southampton)
- Temple Quest – Clue Cracker (Tunbridge Wells)
Thanks to a recent trip to Athens (and a previous one to America), this year we’ve also played some of the escape rooms that were in the Top 100 outside of the UK. These are the games that we’ve played (and will soon be posting for reviews from). Spoiler alert – they’re really good!
- #1 – Chapel and Catacombs – Lockhill (Athens, Greece)
- #10 – El Exorcista – No Exit (Athens, Greece)
- #13 – Paradox Project 2: The Bookstore (Athens, Greece)
- #26 – Paradox Project 3: The Music Academy (Athens, Greece)
- #41 – Ice Tiki – Way Out Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)
- #53 – Woman in Black – Coven Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)
- #54 – The Sanatorium (Night/Midnight Mode) – Lockhill (Athens, Greece)
- #63 – Lab Rat – Hatch Escapes (Los Angeles, USA)
- #75 – Wake Up – Station 33 (Athens, Greece)
In Summary
We’re big cheerleaders for the TERPECA awards. The effort that goes into making this the number one award for the escape room industry is phenomenal. There are many other escape room awards, but none come close to this one for prestige.
One notable change this year in the awards is that there was no award category online games. Unfortunately many online experiences have ended since the world reopened, so they couldn’t justify having space for them. But there still are some great online/play at home escape room experiences around, you just have to look a bit harder to find them.
It was great to see the UK break into not only the Top 100 but also the Top 50. We had the pleasure of playing some great games this year and it’s great to finally see the UK getting some international recognition. We’ve spoken with many escape room owners and the passion/money/sweat/tears that they put into creating wonderful experiences for us all is truly breathtaking.
- #47 – Mr Copplestone’s Curiosity Shoppe – Escape Quest (Macclesfield, UK)
- #96 – Atlantis – Escapement (Broadstairs, UK)
Congratulations to the team behind the awards, you have done an incredible job and the award ceremony was arguably perfect (a guest appearance by us to introduce the #1 game certainly helped with that). One thing is for sure, we need to do a lot more travelling in 2023 to try and fit in more of these great experiences.
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