Late September news updates

Newspaper graphicA few short news stories and they’re all good news, so without further ado:

  • Escape Plan Ltd. report that their lease has been extended until late January 2016, so there’s longer to enjoy their current game in its present location. Celebrate this good news by using the launch discount code, which will spiral into infinity for good when business closes on Friday night.
  • Excited to see Play-it-Real, an English language blog on exit games by the owner of one in Amsterdam. It’s only two posts old, but Exit Games UK really loved the Play-it-Real recap of attending the convention in Germany three weeks ago. Not much has been written about what happened there, making this article a must-read.
  • Only four days to go for the crowdfunding campaign for the Red House Mysteries exit game in Exeter. The campaign has come on in leaps and bounds over the last two or three days and is now well past 90% funded. While you can’t take anything for granted, you would be disappointed if your ticket pre-orders at extremely attractive-looking prices weren’t to come to fruition from this point.
  • Good news about new games coming at sites in Nottingham: Escapologic are opening their third room, E.P.I Centre on Saturday; it’s a game about compound interest, or at least about an interesting compound. Alma City has just been hit by an earthquake. There’s panic on the streets. Chaos and devastation. Buildings are collapsing. Fires are raging. People are screaming. Cars are crashing. Your team is the disaster cleanup crew. You have one hour to save billions of pounds of chemical research from the Edward Palamate Institute. Stabilise the systems. Save the priceless chemical sample. Get out before the contents of your cryogenic case disperse and it’s all over. Elsewhere in the city, the second room at Cryptology, which is set to put the crypt into Cryptology, “will be ready for an October launch”. Good times!
  • And finally, Agent November used Twitter to confirm the announcement that the intellectual property for the well-known large-scale zombie chase game 2.8 Hours Later has been bought from the sadly insolvent Slingshot. The zombies may yet run again; it will be rather exciting to see what a company that is used to smarter games might do to refresh the familiar concept!

End of July news round-up

Newspaper with spectacles and pencilDouble news round-up? Aargh, so many longer pieces to write, so little time to write them. Here’s an assortment of quick stories.

1) Time Run of London have extended their run into 2016 – specifically, until the end of January. Last time this site looked at their bookings after an extension, it looked like they were going to put the price up; now it doesn’t. Hurrah! Interestingly, it looks like you can book tickets for Christmas Day – if this is deliberate, that could well make it a Christmas Day to remember (though getting there might be tricky as public transport shuts down). Take a look at the extremely positive review from The Logic Escapes Me, who did remarkably well recently.

2) The Logic Escapes Me largely keeps itself to London and does so very successfully, but feeds a few interesting stories here as well. St. Helens, in eastern Merseyside (a place whose name can only be pronounced in the dulcet tones of rugbeh leeeg’s Eddie Waring) has a library system that is running a two-week pop-up escape room this August. (Love the retro Teletext graphics.) Much of the content has been generated at a school already and there are drop-in sessions for the local youth to add further ideas. The finished game will admit either four or five teams daily, each of up to four players; free tickets are available between Saturday 15th August and Saturday 29th August. A really exciting initiative; other library systems, take note!

3) However, something else exciting is coming to Merseyside even before then; Breakout Liverpool are launching their fifth room on Saturday 8th August. The game is entitled The Facility, a title picked in a public poll. In it, “You arrive at an unknown location for a once in a lifetime opportunity; a conference held by the critically acclaimed, Dr. Andrews. His work is widely known throughout the research circles, but he has remained hidden in the shadows for years. What you don’t know, is that Dr. Andrews has gone mad, creating a string of tests that have gone disastrously wrong. He has brought you here for his final experiment. You have one hour to escape his maze of tricks and games, before a deadly virus kills you all.

4) Play Exit Games have posted a competition in which you can win tickets to play Escape Plan in London. Very cool!

5) A quick couple of discounts: The Room of Glasgow have a Wowcher deal. You’ve got two days to buy a £39 voucher (down from £80) and until August 12th to use it to book a space on Sunday, August 16th, 23rd or 30th. Pretty specific, and terms and conditions apply, but if you can make it work then you can get a team of up to 10 players who have the chance to solve the mystery of Sarah Lynn. Back down in Liverpool, Exit Strategy posted a special deal to Facebook; for a limited time, buy a ticket for three players and you can play with up to five!

Now open in London: Escape Plan

Shining a light on an Escape PlanLike tube stations, the exit games in London are mostly north of the river. However, yesterday, the borough of Lambeth got its first place to play as Escape Plan opened in Kennington, just up the Elephant and round the Castle. (There is no connection to the similarly-named Escape Plan Live of Chatham.) The site is distinctive for adopting a World War II theme; while this isn’t an absolute first in the UK, you’ll have to go quite an inconveniently long way if you want to find another one. As noted on Facebook, the location is a pop-up so that they can pilot their first game over a period of four months or so.

The site opens on Mondays to Saturdays; teams of 2-6 (3-5 recommended) will pay £115 for a 60-minute game, though if you can play on a weekday before 6pm, the price is reduced to just £80. A code posted to Twitter offers a 35% discount for a limited time. The site also gave away a ticket to a teacher in a random draw, which is cool.

The first game, logically enough entitled The Adventure Begins, is set in the barracks of a POW camp. Only one prisoner has yet successfully escaped, Bob Hails; the game challenges you to do likewise, based on a journal that he has left behind. The team behind the game have advanced plans for at least two later attractions, though the restrictions on their current location are forcing them to a single game for now. Nevertheless, the site prides itself on its immersive and authentic setting, which should be available even already.

Attention!