Another reason to visit Chatham
The second unsolved mystery is located in a basement of an unknown location.
In THE BASEMENT, you and your team will have to perform under pressure if you want to escape alive.
We planned this day trip to Chatham to play the remaining games that we hadn’t played at Unsolved Mysteries and Hysteria, but I must admit that the real driver for us going back there was the chance to play The Basement (well that and Advent Alley, before it closed).
The Basement is the sequel to the other Unsolved Mysteries game, The Cabin which we played a little while ago. Despite the two games being linked by the story you don’t actually need to have played them both (although we would definitely advise it).
Unsolved Mysteries are in possibly one of my favourite locations for an escape room, as they are legitimately based in a Fort, Fort Amherst. Just a short uphill walk from the train station and we found ourselves back at the familiar and impressive fort. There are toilets located on the site, just not directly at the venue so it’s always advisable to go before you arrive. One added bonus, between our games we had a little stroll around the fort and enjoyed some lovely views over the area with a picnic.
When we arrived at the venue we were greeted by the lovely owners, Nikki and Rob. After descending the stairs to the basement level (yes, I’m pretty sure this venue isn’t accessibility friendly) we had a nice chat in their wonderfully cool waiting area – cool in both temperature (good on a hot day) and decoration (there’s a pool table, and a bar).
When it was time to get down to business, we were escorted to the entrance to ‘The Basement’. Standing by the ominous looking door we were given the briefings, before being ‘bagged’ and escorted through the room to our starting location. After hearing an audio recording (I think by William Tanner), we were allowed to remove our bags and our time began.
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
It’s the little details that I love, and one little detail here was that even before stepping foot in the room, the story had overflowed into the waiting area. The trunk where we put our personal belongings could have just been any old trunk, but no. Unsolved Mysteries even labelled the trunk with ‘Property of William Tanner’. A small detail that had no bearing at all on the game, but I personally loved this attention to detail.
Due to how the room is constructed, it was necessary to have the bags over our heads when we were taken to our starting cell as we would have otherwise had fewer surprises, and this game is full of them. The Basement is a room I would class as creepy, and many people will be scared by it, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a full-on horror room. Although the ambient creepy noises that were being played certainly added to the creep-factor.
The Basement is a dark place, but it was more of an atmospheric dark than a total darkness. If the lights were on full it would have changed the entire feel of the game. Despite being dimly lit, we never really had issues seeing what we needed, and when we did need extra light it was provided.
PUZZLES
When I was looking through our notes for The Basement, I realised that we were pretty poor in taking them and I didn’t really record any notes about puzzles, and I think I know why. Yes, this is an escape room, but where its real strengths lie is in the atmosphere they have created. We solved puzzles, we enjoyed the puzzles we solved, but as an experience it was just really good fun.
So now I’m going to try and talk about the puzzles, the puzzles that I made no notes for, whoops. From what I recall the puzzles all revolved around the theme of the game and it felt like we were being tested to see if we deserved to live. The puzzles in The Basement generally seemed to click with us and at times we found that we were flying through them, then later on we slowed down a good chunk.
Even though this was a game more about the experience, it still has solid puzzles and if you enjoy good puzzles then this is a good choice; observation, pattern recognition, wordplay, logic, teamwork and some light maths made up the bulk of the challenges here.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
The Basement is a tricky one to talk about the GM without giving anything away. Suffice to say that Unsolved Mysteries have taken what they’re good at and continued with it. The GM was an integral part of our game and without him committing to his role so well it would have been a very different experience.
I don’t recall if we needed any clues in this game, but if we did, they would have been delivered in a very clever way that would absolutely fit within the story, and never break the immersion.
ANYTHING ELSE
We’d been looking forward to The Basement ever since it opened, and it didn’t disappoint. Ok our time in this game was short, but we loved every minute of it. Was it better than The Cabin? I don’t know. But was it a worthy sequel? Hell yes.
Success/Failed
Final Rating:
| Operation | |
| Puzzles | |
| Room Design | |
| GM/Clues | |
| Excitement |
Team Size: 2 people – escaped in 35:33
Address: Unsolved Mysteries Escape Rooms, Redoubt Guardhouse, Fort Amherst, Dock Road, Chatham, Kent, ME4 4UB
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