For many people December is all about one thing, Christmas. But for those of us who are perhaps a tad addicted to escape rooms we get an early Christmas present each year, the (Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiast Choice Awards) TERPECAs. If you’re not aware of what the TERPECAs are then you’ve been missing out, as they are the escape room awards.
This is how the TERPECA team describe the awards;
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
We’ve done an article like this about the best escape rooms in the UK for the last few years now (2021, 2022, 2023) and often find the TERPECA rankings will help dictate where we next go on holiday. Thanks to the last few awards we have been travelling more frequently to places like the USA, Canada, The Netherlands, Greece, Hungary, Germany, Spain, and Belgium (coming soon).
The TERPECA team are always innovating and last year they added a very handy tool called the ‘TERPECA Room Finder Tool‘ and we’ve found it invaluable in our planning our trips abroad so we’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for the best games in a particular country or city.
I don’t understand the magic of how the TERPECA team pull together all the rankings from enthusiasts, but magic is definitely what it is. In order for enthusiasts to nominate a game for the TERPECAs they have to have played over 200 games, and to vote on them they need to have played over 100 games. This year the award ceremony took place on the 21st December, and 5,314 escape rooms were nominated from 604 nominators with 385 making it through to the final round.
If you want to see the full list of the Top 100 games, then you should head over to the TERPECA website to have a look. But this blog post is titled ‘The Top Escape Rooms in the UK in 2024’, so we probably should get on with that.
**Drumroll please**
These are the games from the UK that got enough nominations to get through to the voting stage. Some we’ve played and we’ve linked to, but others are on our ‘to play list’.
- Mr Copplestone’s Curiosity Shoppe – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) (Ranked #138)
- Percy Pendleton’s Peculiar Predicament – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) (Ranked #170)
- Titterton’s Toffees – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) (Ranked #197)
- The Murder of Max Sinclair – Case Closed (Edinburgh) (Ranked #200)
- The Great Loudini – Escapable (Wakefield) (Ranked #218)
- Henry Fortune’s House of Illusion – Escape Quest (Macclesfield) (Ranked #241)
- Atlantis – The Escapement (UK) (Broadstairs, UK) (Ranked #254)
- SpellCraft – Tulleys Escape Rooms (Crawley) (Ranked #281)
- Loot the Lanes – Pier Pressure (Brighton, UK) (Ranked #282)
- Area 51½ – The Escaporium (Halifax) (Ranked #313)
- Daylight Robbery – Cryptology (Nottingham) (Ranked #319)
- The Explorer’s Diary – Hounds Escape Game Experiences (Crawley, UK) (Ranked #339)
- The Battle for Britain – Escape Plan (London) (Ranked #373)
- The Pit – The Escapement (Margate) (Ranked #376)
As a bonus, here are the games that ranked in the Top 100 that we have also played (some reviews still to be posted).
- #1 – Magnifico’s Circus, Escaparium (Montreal, Canada)
- #3 – The Forgotten Cathedral, Escaparium (Montreal, Canada)
- #4 – Molly’s Game – Down the Hatch (Voorburg, Netherlands)
- #7 – The Dome – Mama Bazooka (Bunschoten, Netherlands)
- #8 – Chapel and Catacombs – Lockhill (Athens, Greece)
- #14 – Wardrobe for Sale, Escaparium (Montreal, Canada)
- #17 – Stay in the Dark – DarkPark (Vlaardingen, Netherlands)
- #24 – The Saint – Shock Escape Room (Madrid, Spain)
- #30 – El Exorcista – No Exit (Athens, Greece)
- #31 – The Toymaker, Big Break Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
- #32 – The Alchemist – Sherlocked (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
- #37 – The Lost Island of the Voodoo Queen, Escaparium (Montreal, Canada)
- #50 – Pins & Needles Tattoo Parlor – The Exit Games (Clearwater, Fl, USA)
- #57 – The Bookstore – Paradox Project (Athens, Greece)
- #75 – Servants of Sleight – The Exit Games (Clearwater, FL, USA)
- #76 – The Bride, Black Lake Escape Rooms (Madrid, Spain)
- #85 – The Sanitorium (Midnight Mode) (Athens, Greece)
- #91 – The End – Dark Park (Zoetermeer, Netherlands)
- #97 – Bites Motel, Bite the Fly (Madrid, Spain)
- #100 – The Music Academy – Paradox Project (Athens, Greece)
Final Roundup
We love the TERPECA awards and what the team keep doing, although it’s because of them that we don’t live in a bigger house and drive fancier cars (escape rooms are expensive)! There are many escape room awards, but none, in our eyes, rival the TERPECAs. It’s probably why we haven’t done our own awards, although we have considered it.
The UK is often underrepresented when it comes to the TERPECAs and there are many theories why, but that’s a much bigger discussion. In the meantime, well done to everyone who not only made it to the Top 100 or the finals, but also to those who got nominated – you rock and we love you!
Sadly no UK games made it into the Top 100 this year, perhaps next year?
Thank you once again to the TERPECA team for an incredible job; the award ceremony was a lot of fun (even if we didn’t make a guest appearance this year…).
Now, it’s time to plan our next few trips!
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