The Escape Key: Armageddon (Newcastle)

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

Armageddon is set in a cold war missile bunker  from the 1980s when the US and Russia vied for supremacy.

The Earth is under threat from a huge asteroid which is hurtling towards the planet.  Scientists have calculated that the impact will hit northern Europe and obliterate everything within a 3000 mile radius. Political and military leaders from around the world have agreed a  plan to avoid a global disaster. The plan is to hit the asteroid with a rocket, deflecting it from its path. Unfortunately, the electro-magnetic surge ahead of the asteroid has rendered modern digital missile systems useless. The only hope is to break in to the abandoned bunker, get the facility up and running and launch the rocket in time.

You have sixty minutes to launch the rocket after which time the collision will be unavoidable and earth will face Armageddon!

The world is depending on you and your team!

Wow, that’s quite an intro! After very nearly crashing and burning in the other room at The Escape Key, ‘Plague Doctor’ we felt we had to redeem ourselves so this was to be our second room of the day.

Entering the room it has a very different feel to their other room and on first impressions it would be fair to say it was pretty basic, but that feeling didn’t last for long.  The first part of the room is your standard escape room with padlocks and some other puzzles, but once you get through the first bit the room undergoes a transformation.

The main part of this room is impressive and has many puzzles that I haven’t seen in any other room. There’s also a bit of crawling at one point, but one piece of advice, don’t send your biggest player like we did (me), it’s a bit cosy.

We enjoyed this room much more than their other room but that could be because we did better at it, perhaps the first room was a warm up for us?

PUZZLES

A really good mix of puzzles, from the traditional which culminated in padlocks, to more high tech which made the room a pleasure to be in. Nothing was too hard and everything made sense, that fact that we didn’t require any clues is testament to that.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

These guys really went the extra mile with their set design on this one. Like I said earlier, it was pretty basic early on but then it went to the next level pretty quickly and we were all in awe of what they had done.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The GM was attentive in providing nudges when it looked like we were a bit lost, and I’m sure he would have been equally attentive with clues had they been needed.

ANYTHING ELSE

Don’t be like me and get distracted by the tool they give you to compete a certain puzzle. I thought it was cool so ended up just exploring other areas with it. Whoops.

Success / Failure

Rating: 

Team: 4 people – escaped in 39:23

Address: 60-62 St, Andrews Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 5SF

Website: https://www.escape-key.co.uk