Top Escape Rooms: No Place Like Gnome (Worcester)

All the warm fuzzies!

Mr Cooper Loooves his Gnomes and his favourite Gnome is Arthur. As Mr Cooper calls them ‘those ruffians’ keep stealing Arthur and taking him on holiday and they even have the cheek to send back pictures and postcards of him.

So Mr Cooper has hidden Arthur away and protected him with some cunning puzzles.

However what Mr Cooper does not know is Arthur loved his holidays and he misses them.

Can you help Arthur get away from it all?

We had just finished our first three games of the day, Jingle Joyride, Sea Quest, and The Dentist. Our fourth and final game at Top Escape Rooms was the one we knew the least about, as it was their newest game, No Place Like Gnome. The name sounded lovely but we’ve found that games with whimsical names can sometimes be a bit lighter in content and designed towards ‘newbies’ or families, so we were going into this game with expectations that we would possibly be a bit let down – as it turns out, we weren’t.

The briefing for this game took place just outside the room, where we were given the health and safety spiel by our in-character gamesmasters. This was followed by the room specific briefing by a friendly dog who I can’t remember the name of, and he appeared more as we progressed through the room.

With all the briefings completed, we opened the door and entered Mr Cooper’s garden, and were instantly both impressed and overwhelmed by everything that stood before us.

It’s worth noting that while we played this game in person, Top Escape Rooms also offer it as an online live avatar game. So if you can’t get down to Worcester in person to play, you can still play it and enjoy the delights that it has to offer.

Covid Procedures: We were the only team in the building during our visit. All staff members wore masks and kept a distance from us, we also wore masks. Rooms were cleaned and sanitised between teams and sanitiser was available for us to use.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

For lack of a better word, this room was simply lovely. It’s the type of room that as soon as you enter you’re filled with all the warm-fuzzies. Think lots of colours, textures, and light hearted touches and you’ll get a pretty good idea of what is here.

There was a good journey to the room as we started outside, then entered the ‘house’, while then entering the garden proper. Personally, if my garden looked like this I think I wouldn’t be very happy, but then again I’m not a fan of ‘clutter’ and odd garden ornaments. Strangely however, stepping into the garden here I felt like a kid in a candy shop, everything was a delight to behold and it really was overwhelming to know what to interact with first.

Despite us thinking that this room may not be designed for enthusiasts, we were wrong – it was designed for everyone. I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this game, it’s perfect for families, enthusiasts, first timers, in fact the only people who wouldn’t like it are those who don’t like escape rooms (and even then I think this could sway them). Top Escape Rooms have added a little extra to the game so that whatever your experience (and speed), you will get value for money.

PUZZLES

Being a family-friendly room, as you may expect there is a fair amount of searching (great for keeping little ones occupied), don’t let that put you off though, all of the searching remained fun as nothing was hidden unfairly. Outside of the searching there were puzzles that fitted into the usual escape room categories such as logic, observation, pattern recognition, decoding, and minor maths.

The puzzles ranged in difficulty but a number of them were beautiful in their simplicity, that’s not to say they were easy, especially if you like to over complicate puzzles like we do, but if you step back and really think about them, they’re perfectly assembled. The puzzles themselves mostly resulted in combinations for padlocks but there was also a good use of tech to keep us guessing.

The game played out in a non-linear fashion with multiple paths we could take, meaning we could work on different things simultaneously, or if something wasn’t clicking we could move on to something else. Generally this game was just good silly fun that I’d challenge you to not raise a smile or two when you’re playing.

This was the newest game at Top Escape Rooms and it showed. It was obviously new when we played it so everything looked fresh and clean, with no signs of wear and tear. But you could also see it in their game and puzzle design, it just felt like a step up on the other games we had played there.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

I previously mentioned that there was a friendly dog who presented the story of the game, well he was also in the game and was used for the clue delivery system (I really should have taken down his name). It was a lovely touch and helped to build the immersion of the game, certainly more  than a walkie-talkie would have. The screen that contained the dog, also had a timer on it so we knew how long we had left.

The dog was more than just a clue system, he was also on hand to interject some humour and add even more fun to our time in Mr Cooper’s garden.

ANYTHING ELSE

The perfect game to end our visit to Top Escape Rooms, No Place Like Gnome was fun from start to end and was a beautifully assembled room with a lighthearted and family friendly feel to it.

If this game is a sign of what is to come from Top Escape Rooms, then we will be detouring to Worcester much more frequently in future!

Success/Failed

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players – escaped in 35:16

Address: Unit 18 Top Barn, Holt Heath WR6 6NH

Website: https://topescaperooms.co.uk/