breakout games inverness – Exit Games UK

One door closes, many more open

Closed blue door image credit: Closed Door via free images (license)

Today is not the worst day in the world to have woken up unexpectedly early, for live entertainment includes following the #egc15 hashtag on Twitter for discussion of the Escape Games Convention in progress. Apparently there are around a hundred attendees, which is impressive. Fingers firmly crossed for more to come!

Some sad news: a single-line announcement points to the closure of Guess-House of Bradford. It’s not immediately clear whether the shuttering will be temporary or permanent, but signs point to fearing the worst. The site’s Facebook posted nine team photos over its summer run; how many other teams there were who went unpictured cannot be known. This site will remember the location for offering players the ability to play solo, an innovation in this country that does crop up as a player request from time to time, though it’s not clear if that option was taken up in practice.

One piece of sad news, but many more pieces of happy news. The best palate-cleanser of all is that Breakout Games of north-east Scotland posted that this weekend they will be donating all the profits that their Aberdeen and Inverness locations generate to Medecins Sans Frontieres, whose Doctors Without Borders provide medical aid where it is needed most around the world. Kudos to them, and yet another good reason to go and play there. Breakout Games aren’t the first exit game to run such charity days and hopefully won’t be the last!

This site has long thought that Wales is one of the larger gaps in the market for exit games and is following the progress of the pre-launch Escape Rooms Cardiff with interest, even before it gets its web site going. However, it’s certainly not the only such project in Wales; Breakout Live Swansea has a venue in mind, a planning application under way and coverage from the local press (twice!) already. Very promising, especially with the news of the founder’s electronics background.

This site has also touched on the work of Fire Hazard, the energetic games company best known for City Dash, a running-sneaking-and-finding-checkpoints urban turbo-orienteering game. On balance this site considered City Dash to be a little too running-y to be quite its taste, though it was delighted to see that the game had been transported to Edinburgh for the Festival and praised by Can You Escape?. However, the latest flavour of City Dash is called Code Red, and there’s a clue in the title. Conversation in person at the Wellcome Collection’s recent Play Spectacular, followed up on Twitter (with thanks to Ken!) suggests that “We added a few extra hard checkpoints to the new series, so puzzlers have another way to get an edge on runners“. That’s the sort of thing to get this site interested!

Early July exit game news

Newspaper graphic Exit game news from three parts of the UK today.

1) In London, Time Run have extended their, er, run from 2nd August until at least 30th September – excluding Mondays, as ever. That said, from 3rd August onwards, the off-peak (weekdays before 5pm) price rises from £24 plus VAT per player to £29 plus VAT per player, and the peak price rises from £29 plus VAT per player to £35 plus VAT per player.

Unrelatedly, Room Escape Adventures‘ Trapped in a Room with a Zombie has moved within town to Whitechapel; ScareTOUR report that the game’s operation has been taken over by Apocalypse Events, who already run plenty of other zombie-themed experiences in the capital. Charmingly, on Valentine’s Day, they had Zombie couples makovers in the same venue as the old TiaRwaZ site…

2) Further north, Logiclock of Nottingham have announced that their second room will be Made in STEIN: Science Adventure. The STEIN company, standing for Science, Technology, Entertainment, Innovations and Novelty, previously had an employee called Professor E. “You’ll enter Professor E.’s room. Professor E. had to go very quickly and without attracting attention. He had to leave so fast he couldn’t find somebody who could continue his work. There are lots of candidates but he needs the best of the best. The Professor asked Mrs. Taylor, his assistant for help. In order to prove your skills you have one thing to do: escape from Professor E.’s room“.

3) Further north still, Breakout Games Inverness of the Highlands announced that they hosted their first proposal! This isn’t an industry first or even a UK industry first – Breakout Manchester have hosted at least one and this site would bet that it isn’t an industry second either – but this is as happy as news gets, and hiding the engagement ring inside the last puzzle is the classiest possible way to do it.

A persistent urban myth is that some stores’ managers have the discretion to celebrate a customer’s waters breaking in their shop with free vouchers and the like. When will we see the first exit game host an unexpected birth on the premises… let alone a labour lasting less than an hour?

Coming soon to Inverness: Breakout Games Inverness

Breakout Games Inverness header This site was impressed to be able to say that exit games are available in the UK as far north as Aberdeen and as far south as Plymouth; their spread has got even further north with the exciting news that the successful Breakout Games Aberdeen are spreading even further north with the imminent opening of Breakout Games Inverness.

The site is launching with two games, both of which are designed to be played by teams of two to six and feature 60-minute time limits. They’re both different designs to anything that they had in Aberdeen, even noting the launch of their new Black Gold game in Aberdeen. Additionally, they’re also carrying across the property of having two copies of one of their games to enable head-to-head competition.

In the Black and White game, which can be played head-to-head between black and white units, “Set in the everyday with an extra ordinary twist, your team of wannabe escape artists will work together as you race against the clock in a bid to escape in time“. That’s very generic, but the black and white images on the web site might give some clues.

This site also loves the local flavour of the Nessie game, intended to be slightly the more difficult of the two: “Professor R. has long been on the trail to uncovering the riddle of the fabled monster and your task is to decipher the clues, crack the codes and solve the puzzle before the office is raided and the evidence is lost forever. Does Nessie really exist or is this just another myth and legend?”

The site notes on Facebook that “We’ve had over 60 groups of ‘guinea pigs’ at the venue taking on each of the rooms we have to offer and are EXTREMELY excited to bring some bespoke, challenging escape games to Inverness…” so the games are well and truly tried and tested. There’s also an opening offer on the itison social buying site; you have just over three days to buy vouchers permitting teams to play games in either the new Inverness site or the original Aberdeen site at just £26. That’s a spectacular discount!