News round-up for the start of October

News round-upThe usual monthly statistics are being produced at this moment, but some news stories cannot wait:

  • The most time-critical story refers to a competition for a gift voucher to play Locked in Edinburgh. The competition claims to close at “midnight Monday 5th October”; fingers crossed that means “midnight at the end of Monday 5th October”, because if it means midnight at the start of Monday 5th October then you’ve got, what, nearly half an hour to enter. Better hurry either way!
  • Good news: The Great Escape Game of Sheffield have announced their first marriage proposal! It’s not clear whether the photo is a depiction of (a non-spoilery part, obviously, of) the Mad Scientist Room bedecked with a proposal in rose petals, but it’s delightful to imagine that it was. This is the fifth UK exit game proposal that this site knows about and the first time that it has been mentioned that the recipient of the proposal was male. (No clue about the proposer, not that it matters.) Many congratulations to the happy couple and to the site!
  • Bad News: House of Enigma of Leeds’ web site’s booking section says Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances outside of our control, we are no longer able to accept new bookings. Please accept our sincere apologies and we hope to be back soon! The Facebook presence has been taken down as well. That was quick; as the site was open for less than a month, perhaps this might be considered a false start rather than something where you had not to blink to miss it. As over 240 copies of the Groupon voucher were sold, this site dearly hopes that this is a temporary blip; should the worst come to the worst, consult the Groupon FAQ. Fingers firmly crossed that it’s back for good before long.
  • Good news from elsewhere: just over a year ago, this site discussed Boda Borg, a live action puzzle action game with seven branches in Sweden and one in Ireland. Happily, yesterday a branch quietly opened very near Boston in the United States, with the Grand Opening next Saturday. This site enjoyed coverage in the Boston Globe, which suggests that co-owner Chad “Ellis spent close to $4 million renovating the 30,000-square-foot space“. Whoa. No matter what the budget, it sounds spectacular.
  • This site enjoyed the embedded trailer video for GTFO Escape Entertainment of Canada, which obviously stands for “Get The Fun On”, in the TFI Friday style of acronyms and their expansions. Nevertheless, the video is fun because it contains a code to find… and this site thinks it has only found the first two-thirds of it. You can do some quite clever things with YouTube videos, such as interactive rock paper scissors (which has been implemented many other ways on YouTube, too). Can there be a meaningful way to embed a more interactive puzzle within a trailer video for an exit game?

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