The Great Big Escape: Hop House Homicide (Dorchester)

Don’t forget your mission.

A homicide has taken place at the Hop House, can you help solve the case?

Scott Linden, 33, was found murdered in his apartment early this morning. You and your fellow detectives have been given the task of solving his murder with the promise of a promotion if you succeed.

The 6 suspects have been detained for a while now and without your assistance the killer will walk free.

Do you and your team have the skills to piece together all the clues and evidence before the suspects get released? The streets of Dorchester are counting on you.

Who killed Scott?

We were down in Dorset for a family holiday so decided to detour to a newly opened venue that had caught our eye, The Great Big Escape. These guys have opened up in Dorchester, although it’s a little out of the main town, near to Dorchester South train station and surrounded by a number of eateries – but it was easy to find with plenty of parking nearby.

When we arrived we were greeted by our host, Amy. It was clear to see that when we visited, The Great Big Escape were very new. They had a reception area (and a fancy looking coffee machine) but there was no seating/waiting area for teams – just an area where photos were taken, but we gather that seating will come soon enough (understandably, they focussed on getting a game up and running before worrying about reception seating).

Amy proceeded to give us the health and safety briefing while we were standing in the reception area, then with those formalities out of the way she led us through to the room to begin our mission.

It’s worth pointing out that this venue doesn’t have a toilet on-site, but I’d imagine you could find one in a local restaurant/coffee shop if needed.

Covid-19 Precautions: Masks were not required or worn by staff, and no sanitiser was provided. We didn’t see any other teams while we were on site.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

On entering the room, a short mission briefing played on the screen and was also presented audibly over the speaker system. In a nut shell, there was a murder and we had to work out who the killer was – something we swiftly forgot we needed to do until pretty much the end of the game.

At the start, the game was dark but it doesn’t remain dark for too long. I certainly wouldn’t describe the room as a bright room but we didn’t struggle too much too see, and a torch was provided (although it would have been nice to have one torch per person, rather than per team).

It’s highly unlikely that anyone playing this game will be ‘wowed’ by the set, it was very much on the basic side and was really rather stark. That’s not always the end of the world, as a bland set can be saved by exceptional puzzles; unfortunately though, we didn’t find the puzzles to be that.

PUZZLES

The puzzles in Hop House Homicide pretty much fitted the theme, and somehow the game managed to keep us locked up for 44 minutes, but when we looked back on this game and started to think about the puzzles, we felt rather flat. Counting the puzzles, it doesn’t seem like there were actually that many, and one or two of them were a bit long winded and felt tedious to solve.

The game played out in a very linear manner and I’d imagine that experienced teams would find it quite easy to overcomplicate a number of them (we certainly did). The puzzles all resulted in codes for a padlock or digital safe and I can’t recall the use of any technology in this room.

One puzzle annoyed us more than the rest as it had something on it that distracted us and led us to believe we needed to do something else with it, but really we didn’t. I don’t know if this was a deliberate decision, or accidental, but it cost us time and at best it could be called a red herring. Another puzzle I took a bit of a punt on and somehow it was the right code, but although being a clever play-on-words, it didn’t really make any sense with the story (and I’m terrible at story, so for me to notice this says a lot).

The limited puzzles that were in the room generally fitted into; very basic searching, following directions, observation, decoding, and a fair amount of reading. Obviously the main part of your mission is to work out who killed Scott, so make sure you don’t forget that!

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Amy was our extra team member behind the scenes providing support should it be needed, and on a couple of occasions we did need two nudges to move us forward. These nudges were because we were being a bit dim and because of one puzzle which looked far too ambiguous for our liking.

When the clues came through we didn’t have to wait too long, and they were displayed on the screen in the room accompanied with an audible alert so we knew to have a look. The screen was also used to display our countdown timer.

ANYTHING ELSE

This room felt like it was set up in a rush just so they could get their doors open. Sparse set design, lacking puzzles, frustrating puzzles, and a very anti-climatic ending meant we left just feeling a bit flat. This game has a premium price tag, but it was not a premium experience.

The Great Big Escape did mention that their next room will be vastly different to Hop House Homicide so we have hope that it will be better and we’ll certainly be keeping an eye out to see if we return to give it a try.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 44:35

Address: 6 Brewery Square, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1HX

Website: https://thegreatbigescape.com