The Lift Escape Rooms: The Lift Shaft 2.0 (Brighton)

Deja Vu?

Put on your hard hat, pick up your torch, and step into The Lift Shaft.

Suspended above you is the lift – but it’s malfunctioning! We need you, our trained engineers, to get it fixed.

The catch? The lift is descending towards you. Your only chance of survival is to fix the malfunction before it comes crashing down on top of you!

If you’re getting a strange case of deja-vu reading this review, that’s not a surprise, as we have actually played and reviewed The Lift Shaft before. When we last played it, it was a shorter game but they’ve since upgraded it into a full 60 minute game, so we felt it deserved its own new review. We don’t normally do re-runs but as we were in town to play Comic Chaos and Lock and Rock we thought we may as well complete the set.

To avoid being influenced by my former review, I’ve not re-read it, and actually can’t remember what I wrote. Hopefully this will be a standalone, unique review for the new version of the game.

Even though this is a longer version of the original Lift Shaft, it’s located in the same venue and same shipping container as the original, so nothing new or different there.

When we arrived we were warmly welcomed by one of the owners, Sam. Sam showed us to their cosy waiting area and we of course had a lengthy catch up about all things escape rooms. Before too long, we stowed our personal possessions, climbed the stairs, and donned our hi-viz.

With health and safety clothing on, we received our health and safety briefing, followed by the mission briefing, and then it was time to have a major car of Deja-vu as we entered The Lift Shaft (again).

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

I’d definitely question the build quality at The Lift. We’ve visited twice now, and on both occasions the lift shaft was faulty…weird. Oh well, it’s a good thing we were trained lift engineers!

The Lift Shaft feels wonderfully authentic, mostly due to the fact that it takes place in a rather cosy shopping container. We played as a team of two, but any more than a four and I think you’d be too cosy – actually, I just looked it up and the maximum occupancy is four, so yes, stick with that.

The Lift Shaft isn’t going to wow you with its set design, but it’s not really there for that. There are lots of things around the room that feel authentic, some are part of the game, others are just purely cosmetic, but nothing stands out as feeling massively out of place.

One thing that I think I would have liked, just to add to the atmosphere, and to distract us from the outside world, would have been some ambient noises. Instead it was just deathly silent. This is just a personal preference, but perhaps some ominous ‘creaking of metal’ noises would have added a little extra.

PUZZLES

When we last played this game, being a shorter experience, it was obviously lighter on the puzzle side. Fortunately, moving this to a 60 minute game has meant they’ve added more puzzles, and actually more tech too.

We haven’t replayed many games (actually, I’m not sure we’ve replayed any, ok maybe one?), but what I found interesting was how little we remembered of The Lift Shaft. Obviously we remembered some things but we started questioning what was new, and what was old.

It’s hard to fit too many puzzles into a room of this size, but thanks to a clever use of space, and tech, there were a decent amount of puzzles to keep us occupied. Searching, observation, maths, logic, and pattern recognition were the bulk of the puzzles.

There were a fair number of padlocks in this game, but it wasn’t all padlocks. As I mentioned, there was a good use of tech and it’s clear to see that the team at The Lift are always looking to up their game.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I don’t recall needing help in The Lift Shaft, but if we did, there was a phone in the room that we could use to receive help from our supervisor off-site.

It’s clear to see that The Lift escape rooms is a passion project for the team there. They love what they do, and they genuinely seem to have fun doing it. That passion comes through in their hosting, and their welcome and debrief. Sam was clearly watching us closely as we were able to talk through our complete game afterwards.

ANYTHING ELSE

We enjoyed The Lift Shaft 1.0, but I’d say we enjoyed The Lift Shaft 2.0 more. The extra tech and puzzles they added fit seamlessly into the game, and although nothing will wow you, it’s a fun game to add to your Brighton itinerary.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players

Address: 10 New England Rd, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN1 4GG

Website: https://theliftbrighton.com/