Coming soon to London: Time Run

Time Run logoThanks to Ken and The Nudge for this one; another exit game is coming to London soon. Tickets are available now, and booking is open for 23rd April to 2nd August, except Mondays.

As suggested above, the game is called Time Run and it concerns the (mis?)adventures of Luna Fox, time travel pioneer, and the upbeat robotic assistant she built, Babbage. The location will have two identical versions of the first game, The Lance of Longinus, described as “for groups of 3-5 people. You and your team will be sent on an action-packed, 60-minute quest across history, in pursuit of a mysterious artefact (…) The object you seek is powerful – a long-forgotten relic, thought to be lost in the midsts of time. If it were to fall into the wrong hands, it could be catastrophic: your intervention is of vital importance“. There are some similarities with the story used in at least one other exit game. Gorgeous, evocative characters, though.

The location is in Hackney in north-east London, in a part of the city where the Underground dare not go. It’s close to a railway station called London Fields, which made this site think for a minute “London Fields? Never heard of it… ah, wait, this must somehow be a Google map of an alternate universe London from another time; huh, that’s pretty cool”. However, no, it’s real – it’s two stops from Bethnal Green, in the general direction of Seven Sisters. The web site is high-end, and the characters are tremendous. The price is also high-end to match: £29/player plus VAT, though just £24/player plus VAT on weekdays before 5pm.

It’s worth looking at the history of the people behind the project. A name linked with the project is Josh Ford, who ran the boutique festival Winterwell for eight years. More recently, he ran a pop-up crazy golf course, Swingers, in a warehouse in Shoreditch, that received high praise from those who know for the course, as well as for the A-list of street food vendors that were attracted. There’s a common thread here whereby Ford is not afraid to close things down once they’ve run their course, so maybe better not to flutter with the announced end of the 15-week run; however, the site’s FAQ does hint that more missions are being developed, and the game’s story would surely permit Luna to go on many more adventures over time.

Perhaps the part of the body of prior work that is most intriguing is that Ford and company ran Who Stole The Tarts? in a previous year: a one-off investigative journey where guests will be invited to solve the mystery to unlock the entrance to a fabulous hidden world. Following riddles and finding secret rooms, all those involved will have the chance to find the true culprit, advise the jury, make the sentence and order the punishment. Now that’s definitely the sort of prior experience to have if you want to get the world very excited about what you might be able to do in the context of an exit game.

4 thoughts on “Coming soon to London: Time Run”

  1. Hi,

    do you have the website address of Time Run? I can’t seem to find any traces of it with a Google search. Thanks!

      1. Hi Chris, have you come and played Time Run yet? I’ve actually just started working with them in a commercial manner and I’m keen to find out what you think? Didnt know if you were based in London or not but could help out with a game if you fancied? This is all quite new to me and I come from a more traditional video game commercial background but really appreciate your chat and would be cool to connect 🙂

        lex @ http://www.time-run.com

        1. Hi, Lex! This site has had a policy of never confirming or denying whether or not it has played any specific games. It’s a little like the restaurant reviewer principle; as a reviewer, you don’t want to be treated any differently from any other member of the public, so I don’t want any site to know whether I am actually in any particular group of players or not. That said, this site has deliberately never featured any exit game reviews yet, but that’s not to say that it might not do so at any particular moment.

          This site also has a policy of not accepting free games and an eighteen month track record of never having done so, though your kind offer is gratefully appreciated.

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