TimeQuest: The Quest to Save Camelot (Paddock Wood)

A bit ‘ Crystal Maze-y’

There has been a lot of activity from the Sniglets over ther tv past few hours. Intel has reported that the Sniglets have returned back to Medieval times to Camelot and the court of King Arthur. What we have been able to intercept and decipher is that they are planning to cause chaos in Camelot by destroying the brotherhood of the Knights of the Round Table. Both King k jku Arthur and that e Knights of the Round Table area powerful symbols of the knightly code and our heritage. Allowing the Sniglets to tamper and ultimately fracture the code of chivalry would cause chaos to the order we know today.

Your mission is simple, return to Camelot and repair the fracture caused by the Sniglets. You will need to draw on your training to ensure you complete your mission and return to the present day within the 60 minute time window.

Having just completed Reset and Saving Operation Neptune, The Quest to Save Camelot was our final room of the day and having just experienced two very different rooms we really didn’t know what to expect.

We’ve done one or two medieval themed rooms but never an Arthurian themed one, and as this is a period of time that fascinates me, I was looking forward to seeing what they did.

As with the other rooms at TimeQuest the briefing took place outside the entrance to the room, however, this time our GM was James (who we later found out was the room designer too). Once again those pesky Sniglets had disrupted time and we were sent back to fix it.

PUZZLES

The first thing worth noting about this room was that there were no code padlocks (in the traditional sense at least) and a number of the puzzles that needed solving were inputted in handmade items that didn’t feel out of place.

The second thing to point out is that this is a very search heavy room. If you’re not a fan of searching literally everywhere then you may want to avoid this room; saying that, the searching element makes it a great room if your group contains children.

Discount the search element and you’ll be left with a room that relies heavily on logic puzzles and some out-of-the-box thinking. What I particularly enjoyed was that some things had multiple ways you could solve them and the team at TimeQuest were happy for you to find your own solution (within reason).

One could argue that one particular thing bends the rule about ‘using things only once’ but they’ve found a loophole here so technically they’re in the clear.

I actually really enjoyed the puzzles in this room and how they were different from what you’ll find in most other rooms. Make sure you go willing to search and don’t take everything at face value, and you’ll be fine.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

I love escape rooms where there are secret rooms that you can’t see until they open, but I equally enjoy rooms where everything is on show but you have to solve puzzles to progress and get into the additional spaces. The Quest to Save Camelot is the latter. Being in an oast house is impressive in its own right, but throw in an Arthurian set with (spoiler alert) a giant round table and you can’t go wrong.

This room starts off in a linear fashion but as you progress it opens up into a multilinear set that enables your team to split up and work independently until it brings you all back together towards the end.

I went into this room expecting the set to be a bit tacky, I had no reason to, but that’s what I was expecting. Yet once we got in it was clear to see that they had put in a lot of effort to make this room as authentic as possible. As mentioned before, some of the puzzles were lovingly made from wood (in-house) rather than just buying in items.

There was really only one thing we weren’t fans of in this room and that was something which didn’t actually serve a purpose other than to slow teams down, arguably a red herring. If you remove that, then we thoroughly enjoyed everything in this room, even the searching.

Another nice touch was that some of the puzzles/mechanics were discreetly labelled as child-friendly. I assume this meant they had gone through rigorous testing and were unlikely to be easy to break, but it was nice that if children were part of your group they could still participate.

The ending to this room was satisfying and it was very clear it was the end of our mission. You’ll probably have to fight over who gets to do it though!

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Our GM, James had a pretty easy time with us in this room as everything seemed to click and we flew through it. He had to chime in at one point with a helpful nudge to make sure we didn’t go off on a tangent by not trusting our work, but this was perfectly timed and he was obviously paying attention and reading the room well.

This room had the same clue system as the other rooms, walkie-talkies, I know, not very Arthurian, but in the backstory of time travel, they made it work. There was also no timer in the room which I can never tell if I like or not, but in a way, it was nice to not have to see time ticking down in front of our eyes.

The team at TimeQuest are lovely people and passionate about what they do. Michael, the owner, even helped us change the wheel on our car (we hit a pothole), so talk about going above and beyond!

ANYTHING ELSE

Going into this room I didn’t expect it to be my favourite at TimeQuest, but it was. The outside-of-the-box thinking and the heavy search element made this very enjoyable for us, and the attention to detail was also refreshing.

This room is sure to be a family favourite so if there are children in your group then this room is a no-brainer!

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – saved history in 41:33

Address: Bell 4, The Hop Farm, Paddock Wood, Tonbridge TN12 6PY

Website: https://www.timequest.net