The Best Escape Rooms in the UK in 2023

It’s the most wonderful time of the yearrrrrr…. TERPECA time! Each year, around Christmas time we sit around our computer and give thanks for all the escape rooms we’ve played in the year, and watch the TERPECAs live stream to help us work out where we may play next year.

Thanks to the TERPECAs, over 2022 and 2023 we managed to tick off some great games by visiting places like Athens, America, Canada and Amsterdam. But there are many many more places we need to visit – and the TERPECAs have just added many more countries to that list! They’ve just added a very handy TERPECA Room Finder tool and you should definitely check it out.

Over the last couple of years we’ve written articles with catchy titles like ‘The Best Escape Rooms in the UK in 2021’, and ‘The Best Escape Rooms in the UK in 2022’, so it was kinda obvious that we’d follow on with that tradition. So here it is, the best escape rooms to play in 2023!

If you’ve been living under a rock and aren’t sure what the TERPECA awards are, well it’s the Top Escape Room Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Awards, or in the words of the TERPECA team:

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 TERPECA awards team showcases remarkable ingenuity, having developed sophisticated algorithms to assess games nominated and voted for by escape room enthusiasts. Unlike platforms like TripAdvisor, where someone can declare a single game as the “best escape room in the world” after just one play, TERPECAs requires enthusiasts to have played over 200 games for nominations and over 100 games for voting. This year the awards ceremony took place on the 16th December (just in time for Christmas), and 939 escape rooms were nominated from 450 nominators, covering 37 countries.

If you want to see the full list of the Top 100 winners in the world, then you can head over to the Top Escape Room Enthusiasts’ Choice Awards site – and there are some amazing games/experiences on that list. But really the reason you’re here is to see which are the best escape rooms in the UK, right? So without further ado, here are the list of games from the UK that got enough nominations to get through to the voting stage.

• Loot the Lanes – Pier Pressure (Brighton, UK)
• Atlantis – The Escapement (UK) (Broadstairs, UK)
• Wunderwaffe Operation Quartz – The Escapement (UK) (Broadstairs, UK)
• UI-55 – Compendium (Bury, UK)
• Southern Dis-Comfort – Hounds Escape Game Experiences (Crawley, UK)
• The Explorer’s Diary – Hounds Escape Game Experiences (Crawley, UK)
• Nethercott Manor – Tulleys Escape Rooms (Crawley, UK)
• SpellCraft – Tulleys Escape Rooms (Crawley)
• Viking – Extremescape (Disley)
• The Mixed-Up Mind of Mr Crabheal – Escape from the Room (Epsom)
• Area 51½ – The Escaporium (Halifax)
• The Battle for Britain – Escape Plan (London)
• cQ ORIGENES – clueQuest (London)
• Henry Fortune’s House of Illusion – Escape Quest (Macclesfield)
• Mr Copplestone’s Curiosity Shoppe – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) (Ranked #45)
• Percy Pendleton’s Peculiar Predicament – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) (Ranked #93)
• The Pit – The Escapement (UK) (Margate)
• Monuments – Cave Escape (Nottingham)
• Daylight Robbery – Cryptology (Nottingham)
• Age of Magic – Escape Reading (Reading)
• Pudding Lane 1666 – TimeTrap Escape Rooms (Reading)
• The Diamond Dogs – Clue Cracker (Tunbridge Wells)
• The Great Loudini – Escapable (Wakefield)

Just to balance things, here are the games that ranked in the Top 100 that we have also played.

• #1 – Molly’s Game – Down the Hatch (Voorburg, Netherlands)
• #2 – The Dome – Mama Bazooka (Bunschoten, Netherlands)
• #3 – Chapel and Catacombs – Lockhill (Athens, Greece)
• #18 – Stay in the Dark – DarkPark (Vlaardingen, Netherlands)
• #20 – El Exorcista – No Exit (Athens, Greece)
• #29 – Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor – The Exit Games (Clearwater, Fl, USA)
• #31 – The Alchemist – Sherlocked (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
• #33 – The Bookstore – Paradox Project (Athens, Greece)
• #41 – Servants of Sleight – The Exit Games (Clearwater, FL, USA)
• #65 – The End – Dark Park (Zoetermeer, Netherlands)
• #66 – The Music Academy – Paradox Project (Athens, Greece)
• #81 – The Sanitorium (Midnight Mode) (Athens, Greece)
• #85 – Lab Rat – Hatch Escapes (Los Angeles, USA)
• #94 – Ice Tiki – Way Out Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)
• #95 – Woman in Black – Coven Escape Rooms (Athens, Greece)

In Summary

We will always enthusiastically support the TERPECA awards, recognizing the extraordinary effort invested in making it the foremost accolade in the escape room industry. While there are numerous other escape room awards, none rival its prestige.

Witnessing the UK not only break into the Top 100 but also secure a spot in the Top 50 was a true joy. We thank all the owners in the UK for the amazing experiences they continue to provide. We have many conversations with escape room owners and the immense passion, financial investment, and hard work they pour into crafting extraordinary experiences for enthusiasts like us is truly appreciated.

Congratulations to these two games from the UK that managed to break into the Top 100 of the 2023 TERPECAs:

• #45 – Mr Copplestone’s Curiosity Shoppe – Escape Quest (Macclesfield, UK)
• #93 – Percy Pendleton’s Peculiar Predicament – Escape Quest (Macclesfield, UK)

Also a huge shout-out to the awards team for an incredible job; the award ceremony was arguably flawless (our guest appearance to introduce The Alchemist by Sherlocked, added to the perfection).

One thing is certain—we plan to embark on more travels in 2024 to tick off as many of the Top 100 as possible!