The Panic Room: The Dollhouse (Gravesend)

Dolls. I f*cking hate dolls!

His collection grows night by night. Will you be become his latest victims? Can you find a way out where so many have failed before you?

A deranged killer with an obsession for dolls and mannequins, known for stripping the flesh off of his victims and much, much worse is on the loose. The police are on a nationwide manhunt to locate the psychopath and his ever-expanding list of playthings; they’ve yet to find a lead. You have been chosen as his next subjects, but you’re not alone…

Work together to achieve your freedom, or become part of the collection!

We’re not normally a fan of horror rooms but The Panic Room seems like one of those places where you’ve ‘gotta do them all’ so we thought we’d give ‘The Dollhouse’ a try.

On entering the room you are locked in what can best be described as a prison cell. The GM leaves you to it and you’re on your own to try and get out before becoming part of the collection. We quickly worked out the first couple of things that we needed to do and felt like we were cruising, but then we hit the third puzzle. Now this puzzle was nothing like we had seen before, and it was hard, very hard. Perhaps a bigger team would have found it easier but as a team of two we struggled.

If/when you get out of your prison cell you instantly encounter something that ramps up the creepiness and resembles something out of a horror movie. In the other room there is a lot going on, puzzles all over the places, doors, gruesome decor, a lot to take in. But once you take a moment to acclimatise and ignore all the body parts you start to see where you can start.

This was a well put together room and they had the theme spot on. We didn’t particularly enjoy this room as much as the other rooms at The Panic Room, but we don’t penalise rooms just because we didn’t do well. So if  you want to do a room at this location that is slightly different to their other rooms, then this is a solid contender.

PUZZLES

Some of the puzzles/challenges in this room were rather hard, although we’re not sure if they were actually hard or if it was just the low light that made them harder. Either way we took what felt like an eternity to get out of the first room, and that was simply because we took the instruction literally. I was less than useless at it but Liz performed admirably, I can’t give more information than that without giving it away.

One or two of the puzzles in the other room really stumped us, and the one on the floor took us far too long and really just made us frustrated and unable to really focus anymore. There was also one ‘puzzle’ that we unfortunately completely bypassed as this would have made life much easier for us.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The room design was very good and they had done a good job at creating a room that made you feel like you were living the story. I don’t like dark rooms if they’re not dark for a reason, especially if they don’t give you decent light and that was the one area where this room fell down, the lighting was really not great.

In one or two areas the game was starting to look a little worn out and rough around the edges, but this is nothing that a little maintenance wouldn’t fix.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Clues were delivered via screens in the room and the GM was very kind with them as we really were struggling in this one. Without such a kind GM there is no way we would have got out. It probably didn’t help that this was our last room before lunch and we were hungry – we don’t focus well when we’re hungry.

ANYTHING ELSE

Although this room is creepy, and it certainly is creepy, I wouldn’t really call it a scary room. Of course what we think of as scary and what you do may be different, there were no live actors, perhaps one or two jump scares, but that was it. It was more creepy than scary.

Success / Failure

Final Rating: 

Team: 2 people – escaped in 57:25

Address: 148-150 Milton Road, Gravesend, DA12 1DP

Website: https://www.thepanicroom.net