This is the sixteenth instalment of a (just about) monthly feature which acts as a status report on the exit games in the UK and Ireland, hopefully acting as part of the basis of a survey of growth over time. It reflects a snapshot of the market as it was, to the best of this site’s knowledge, at the end of 31st July 2015.
The Census
| Category | Number in the UK | Number in Ireland |
|---|---|---|
| Exit game locations known to have opened | 74 | 7 |
| Exit game locations known to be open | 70 | 6 |
| Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure | 1 | 1 |
| Exit game locations known to have closed permanently | 3 | 0 |
| Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction | 8 | 0 |
| Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction | 7 | 0 |
| Exit game projects abandoned before opening | 2 | 0 |
The term opened should be understood to include “sold tickets”, even when it is unclear whether any of those tickets may have been redeemed for played games; the definition of location should be understood to include outdoor locations, pop-up/mobile locations and component parts of larger attractions that are played in the same way as conventional exit games.
Six openings in July; Make A Break has gone from “temporary closure” to “closed permanently” as their web site has decayed sufficiently that Exit Games UK is convinced that if the site comes back (which would be very welcome!) then it would be in some other form.
The Report Card
| Site name | Number of rooms | The reviews | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site name | Total number | Different games | Find reviews | ||
| Adventure Rooms | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Agent November | 3 | 3 | TripAdvisor | ||
| AK Escape Room | 1 | 1 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Bath Escape | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Breakout Games Aberdeen | 3 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Breakout Games Inverness | 3 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Breakout Liverpool | 4 | 5 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Breakout Manchester | 7 | 6 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Can You Escape | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Cipher | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Clue Finders | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Clue HQ Blackpool | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Clue HQ Warrington | 3 | 3 | TripAdvisor | ||
| clueQuest | 6 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Crack The Code Sheffield | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Cryptic Escape | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Cryptology | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Cryptopia | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Cyantist | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Dr. Knox’s Enigma | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Enigma Escape | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| ESCAP3D Belfast | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| ESCAP3D Dublin | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Clonakilty | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Dublin | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Edinburgh | 3 | 3 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Glasgow | 3 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Hour | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Hunt | 10 | 3 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Land | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Live | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Newcastle | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Plan | 1 | 1 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Escape Plan Live | 4 | 4 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Escape Quest | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Rooms | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escape Rooms Plymouth | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escapism | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Escapologic | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Ex(c)iting Game | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Exit Newcastle | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Exit Strategy | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Fathom Escape | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| gamEscape | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| GR8escape York | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Guess House | 3 | 3 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Hidden Rooms London | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| HintHunt | 5 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| iLocked | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Instinctive Escape Games | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Jailbreak! | 1 | 1 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Keyhunter | 3 | 3 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Lady Chastity’s Reserve | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Lock’d | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Lockdown-Inverness | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Locked In Edinburgh | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Locked In Games | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| LockIn Escape | 3 | 3 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Logiclock | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Lost & Escape | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Make A Break | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Mystery Cube | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Mystery Squad | 2 | 2 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Panic! | 1 | 1 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Puzzlair | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Puzzle Room | 1 | 1 | (TripAdvisor) | ||
| Quests Factory | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Room Escape Adventures | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Salisbury Escape Room | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Secret Studio | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| The Escape Room Manchester | 5 | 5 | TripAdvisor | ||
| The Gr8 Escape | 2 | 2 | TripAdvisor | ||
| The Great Escape Game | 4 | 4 | TripAdvisor | ||
| The Live Escape | 1 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| The Room | 5 | 5 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Tick Tock Unlock Glasgow | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Tick Tock Unlock Leeds | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| Time Run | 2 | 1 | TripAdvisor | ||
| XIT | 4 | 4 | TripAdvisor | ||
This site supports all the exit games that exist and will not make claims that any particular one is superior to any other particular one. You’ve probably noticed that this table has removed the review summaries; this site has a page with the review summaries for every site.
This site takes the view that if you’re interested in review summaries, you probably care (at least to some extent) about the question of which site probably has the best popular reviews. Accordingly, you might be interested in the TripAdvisor’s “Fun and Games” rankings lists in (picking only cities with multiple exit games listed) Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham or Sheffield.
Additionally, TripAdvisor now has a page entitled Top Escape Games in United Kingdom. It looks like it lists the fourteen escape games that are both #1 in “Fun and Games” in their town and listed as an escape game first, in some order, then the escape games that are #2, then the escape games that are #3 and so on. The “listed as an escape game” criterion is a bigger one than you might think; at least three very highly-regarded exit games spring to mind that don’t appear on that list, for one is listed as an outdoor activity when it isn’t, a second is listed as a scavenger hunt (highly arguable) and a third is listed as “other fun and games”. (It also remains arguable whether you would choose to rank – say – “#1 of a very small number” ahead of “#2 of a very large number”, that sort of thing.) There’s a different exit game on top of this national list, the third in as many months.
You might also be interested in listings at Play Exit Games, a few of which contain ratings and from which rankings might be derived, or ranking lists from other bloggers. Looking at London sites, The Logic Escapes Me have provided recommendations and detailed comparisons and, thinking bob‘s comparisons. In the North-West, there are rhe QMSM room comparisons and Geek Girl Up North site comparions as well. If you have your own UK ranking list, please speak up and it shall be included in future months. The next step could be some sort of exit game Metacritic, comparing the reviews and optinions of those who have played a great number of such games; hopefully, this would corroborate the popular reviews, or perhaps point out some inconsistencies.
It’s not actually very difficult to estimate the number of people who play an exit game over the course of a month, though it does take a fair bit of work and there are limits as to how accurate it can be. This site uses data available to the public from sites’ booking systems, the number of rooms at each site, any data supplied by the site (either to the public or in private correspondence), and bears in mind trends in the numbers of Facebook likes, TripAdvisor reviews, photos posted and team sizes per site according to team photos. This site won’t necessarily take owners’ claims at face value, but there’s nothing to be gained from turning business away and saying you’re sold out when in fact you aren’t. July may have been a month with less growth than most; it’s the summer and the first three weeks were unusually warm, so many indoor attractions will have struggled.
With all this in mind, this site makes its best estimate that the number of people who have played at least one exit game in the UK or Ireland, at any point in time up to the end of July 2015, is 290,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 5,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 100,000 and 800,000”.) As ever, if someone plays more than one game at the same site, this figure still only counts them once, and this number is only really meaningful in the context of this site’s previous estimates. The other usual caveat is that this figure may exclude data from locations about which this site is ignorant – and this site keeps discovering new locations that it might have found out about earlier!
