Whitechapel Room Escape: Whitechapel (Barcelona)

Rule 18: Limber Up

In 1888, in a famous London neighborhood called Whitechapel, a series of murders committed by Jack the Ripper occurred. Now, 130 years later, a murderer is paying tribute to him and causing chaos following in the footsteps of Jack himself.

In our Room escape we will challenge you to decipher a series of enigmas that will challenge your intelligence, imagination and cooperation in addition to testing your fears. Ingenuity, collaboration, perspective, trust… All the senses must be alert, any small detail can be paramount to overcome the challenge.

“Whitechapel: The Story of Charlotte”

Whitechapel, or to call it by its full name, Whitechapel: The Story of Charlotte, was a game that we hadn’t actually booked when we planned our trip to Barcelona. It was only because we kept getting asked if we were playing it, and had another glowing recommendation from a GM at another venue who was wearing a Whitechapel t-shirt, did we decide to get it booked in to see what all the fuss was about. You know when you book a game, and then when you tell people about it they give a little smirk or a laugh, that’s exactly what happened when we spoke about Whitechapel. A good sign, right?

We arrived at our booked time and the door opened where we were greeted by our host, Sam. First impressions were along the lines of most of the other games we had played in Barcelona – full immersion from the start and straight into darkness and scene setting.

Sam managed to give us an introduction, help us store away our belongings, and partially prepare for what was to come, all while staying in character and speaking with solid English (which made our lives easier).

Before we knew it, the game started, and oh my what a start it was! Already at this point I could see why it was talked about so highly and it’s safe to say that the game play didn’t slip or let up at all.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

It’s always hard to get a good idea of how a game really looks when the light is so dim, but even with the little we could see, it felt like a lot of attention had been put into making this as authentic as possible.

Going to throw it out there now, this game does have a toilet that is available to use, however it’s kinda in the game so it’s a bit of an odd one. We did make use of the facilities, but we waited until after the experience just to be safe. No-one wants to be having a tinkle and suddenly have screaming team-mates run into the room with you (well maybe some people want that, I’m not judging).

The problem with escape rooms that are designed to be live-actor horror rooms is that inevitably you are going to be running scared, in the dark, through rooms and corridors. I’ve certainly done my fair share of running into things and obtaining new war wounds! Fortunately I managed to make it out of Whitechapel with minimal injuries (ok, just one, but that was on me). It seems like they know where people are likely to be running/hiding/cowering, and have designed the space to make it as open as possible.

Whitechapel felt like it could be an accessible room and I don’t recall any steps, ladders, or crawling. The doorways felt like regular sized doorways – although trying to fit two scared people through at once would be challenging. To get the full experience you need to be pretty mobile, but if accessibility is a concern it could be worth reaching out to the venue in advance to see if they can make accommodations for this.

PUZZLES

I thoroughly enjoy horror escape rooms, it’s a lot of fun to see my team-mates (especially Liz) cowering somewhere, giving me a chance to be the hero for a change. But what I REALLY love about escape rooms in general are the puzzles. So games where there is a good mix of scares and puzzles are going to win for me – and Whitechapel felt like it had a good balance of puzzles and scares.

Darkness was certainly a thing in Whitechapel, but with clever use of lighting we could always see when we needed to – and knew where to run to! The puzzles that we encountered, once solved, generally resulted in some tech triggering or a code for a padlock. As one would often expect for a narrative-driven horror game, Whitechapel played out in a linear fashion, but we found that all of our team members were kept occupied – even if that was just keeping watch!

The puzzles in Whitechapel were satisfying to solve, and set at just the right difficulty considering you were terrified of what may be lurking in the dark; observation, communication, teamwork, deduction, logic and bravery (a lot of that) were the bulk of the puzzle types.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

The puzzles were fun, no doubt about that, but really the star of the show for Whitechapel was the interaction with the GM(s). We needed one little nudge at the end, and this was shouted to us through the exit door, as we frantically tried to escape. I don’t recall needing any help for the other puzzles in this game so I can’t really comment on how clues would have come through to us for those, but I would assume it would have also been Sam shouting to us – from somewhere safe.

The less I say about the interaction in this game, the better. But safe to say we have never experienced anything like it with this game, and probably never will!

ANYTHING ELSE

This is not a game for the faint-hearted, but if you’re a lover of horror then Whitechapel is a must play game. We had a great time in this game and it was one of the standout games of our Barcelona trip.

Go in knowing as little as possible, and come out thinking “What the F*ck was that?!”. Then spend the rest of the day trying to get your heart-rate down.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 players

Address: Carrer de les Acàcies, 23, Sant Andreu, 08027 Barcelona, Spain

Website: https://www.roomwhitechapel.com/