A room with a twist, a big twist
Step into the laboratory of Frontier Engineering, a research company tackling the unknowns of science, one mind-boggling paradox at a time. Undertake a 60 minute trial of a mysterious and powerful device they call ‘The Unit’. They won’t tell us what it does, but they assure us that it is completely safe.
In this weird science fiction adventure with strong undertones of Portal, you will be transported to impossible places and experience one of the craziest twists in escape room history. Seriously, this game will blow your minds!
We’d heard a lot about Loop, having unfortunately missed it when Clockwork Dog first released it, so when we decided to go to The Panic Room this room was near the top of the list. The description says ‘this game will blow your minds’ and it certainly does that!
Like the other rooms at The Panic Room, everything is slick and the GMs know their roles inside out and do everything they can to make sure your experience is a good as it can be. We really didn’t know what to expect going into this room as all we knew from our research was that this room was different and had a great twist.
When entering this room you can instantly see that this is going to be something special. The room decoration is perfectly staged to make you feel like you are in a futuristic laboratory. As this room isn’t linear we were able to split up and work on different things at the same time – divide and conquer!
Half way through the game is where Loop sets itself apart from other games and it really ramps up the pressure and the fear of failure. Time is a key factor to this game and it can either be your best friend or your worst enemy – that’s as close to a spoiler as you will get from me on this one.
In the end we were able to close the loop successfully and thus ensure that the new timeline continues as it is supposed to.
What a room!
PUZZLES
A really good mix of puzzles in Loop, some of which we haven’t seen before and were very clever. There were; physical puzzles, physical in the sense that you had to physically move things but not that take any level of fitness or dexterity; a digital puzzle which was a good challenge; and a good logic/mental problem which somehow I got; I must have been possessed on that one!
Overall the puzzles were set at the right difficulty and everything was a perfect fit for the room.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
The room design for this room was spot on and everything worked together to make it a truly immersive experience, including the GM. This wasn’t actually a very big room but the room was cleverly designed so that you felt like you were truly in some strange scientific experiment. The twist in the second part was really cool and it was like nothing we had seen before, no spoilers but it’s really rather good.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
Our GM (plus assistant) was great and he seemed like someone who must really love hi job as he stayed in character for the entire time and the humour was perfectly placed for the role. Clues and nudges were delivered by a pager system which was given to you on entering the room. All nudges were perfectly timed and if we needed a clue they were delivered very swiftly.
ANYTHING ELSE
After the room you get a thorough debrief on how you did and key milestones in your experience, the suspense lasts right up until this briefing as this is where you find out if you actually were successful or not. This room is not just a must-do room in Gravesend, but definitely one of the top rooms in the country.
Success / Failure
Final Rating:
Team: 2 people – ‘total time’ – 51m 57s
Address: 23a St Georges Centre, Princes StreetGravesend, DA11 0TB
Website: https://www.thepanicroom.net
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