Can there ever be such a thing as “too many”?

Overloaded brainThis post is far from a claim that there are “too many” exit games in the UK. It is, however, a call to consider whether there can be a meaningful concept of “too many” games, and – if so – what “too many” might look like.

One follow-up question is whose perspective is being used to ask the question. As a player, can there be too many games? If the lack of replay value drives you to seek out more and more games to play, the bar for “too many” would surely be set very high, if it existed at all. If someone were to want to play every game that existed, or play a game at every site that existed, then a quest to keep up with every new opening might exceed the time and resources you have available. However, such a quest without limiting yourself to a relatively small area strikes this site as an inherently pretty extreme task. While it’s a delight that new sites and games continue to advance the state of the art, surely there comes a point where additional games, except the latest and greatest, have relatively little to offer. This may or may not be before your resources run out.

From the perspective of someone trying to make a living either as staff or owner of a game, “too many” may look quite different. Our society is capitalist; no business has an inherent right to survive. (It’s amusing to consider the existence of an exit game in a planned economy; surely a meritorious citizen would have to apply to play and then wait months or years for a space to play.) On the other hand, the extent to which a game thrives or even survives may not reflect the quality of the game in question, so much as other matters like the effectiveness of the way in which it is marketed. It seems sadly likely that there will be some brilliant games which fall by the wayside even when lesser – or merely good – games continue for longer; for those businesses, the raised bar for continued survival might be said to have arisen from too many games.

Another way to look at it might be that “too many” simply reflects more than “the right number” – and presupposes that there could be such a thing as a right number. Someone at last week’s unconference seriously looked forward to the thought of there being 300 or 400 sites in the UK; no names, no pack drill, but it was someone who knew a lot about brand expansion. It’s certainly true that the UK has fewer sites than some other countries – even some other smaller countries – and that, say, London has fewer sites than other major conurbations. Do the UK and London have to be at the top of these charts, though? Is the demand really there? The signs have looked good so far, but there surely has to come a point where things find a natural limit.

Do you suppose there could be a million players in one year? How about three million? (There aren’t many hobbies who get three million players in a year; an estimate sufficiently credible for the BBC suggested that there were only four or five million people who played tennis at least once in a year, with maybe a tenth of that playing once a week.) Even allowing for people playing multiple games, and enthusiasts bringing the average up, considering real-world typical team sizes, a million players in a year might look like 300,000 games in a year. (Maybe 250,000; maybe 400,000.) That’s 5,000-8,000 teams per week, keeping the numbers simple. When looking at it last year, the figures pointed to a room (not a site) being more successful and popular than most if it was played twenty times a week, with more than half of these at weekends. So a million plays a year might look like roughly 300 rooms, all being pretty busy at weekends. There were more than 230 rooms in the UK and Ireland at the end of 2015, and quite possibly close to 300 rooms in the UK alone by now.

There’s an awful lot of supply out there already. Whether there’s “too much”, and hence “too many” sites, remains to be seen; fingers crossed that demand remains strong and has further to grow.

The League Table: end of December 2015

3-dimensional bar chartThis is the twenty-first 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 December 2015.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 107 7
Exit game locations known to be open 95 4
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 4 2
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 8 1
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 8 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 8 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 with open-ended time limits and component parts of larger attractions that are played in the same way as conventional exit games. Pop-ups with deliberately very short runs (e.g. Hallowe’en specials, or games run at conventions or festivals) are not counted in this list; games with deliberately finite but longer runs (e.g. Panic!, which awarded a prize to its champion at the end of its sixteen week run) are counted.

This month has seen six additions and three subtractions; Trapped Up North‘s FAQ page said “We open on 1st August and run various dates till the 23rd Dec“, so this looks like a clean fold and a happy ending, but a Trapped Up North 2016 would not come as a surprise and would be a welcome return. The other subtractions are Lock Down Zone of northern South Yorkshire and Zombie in a Room of Chesterfield, both of whose web sites appear to be temporarily suspended and who seem to be making no progress on social media.

The Report Card

Site name Number of rooms The reviews
Site name Total number Different games Find reviews
A Curious Escape 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Adventure Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor
Agent November 3 3 TripAdvisor
Bath Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Games Aberdeen 4 3 TripAdvisor
Breakout Games Inverness 3 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Liverpool 5 6 TripAdvisor
Breakout Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor
Can You Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cipher 0 0 TripAdvisor
Clue Finders 2 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Blackpool 4 3 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Brentwood 2 2 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Sunderland 1 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Warrington 5 5 TripAdvisor
clueQuest 7 2 TripAdvisor
Code to Exit 2 2 TripAdvisor
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptic Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptology 2 2 TripAdvisor
Cryptopia 0 0 TripAdvisor
Cyantist 2 2 TripAdvisor
Dr. Knox’s Enigma 2 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Quests 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Belfast 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Dublin 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Clonakilty 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Dublin 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Edinburgh 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Entertainment 8 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Game Brighton 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Glasgow 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hour 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hunt 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Land 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Live 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Newcastle 2 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Plan 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Plan Live 4 4 TripAdvisor
Escape Quest 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Durham 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Plymouth 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Scotland 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escapism 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escapologic 3 3 TripAdvisor
escExit 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
EVAC 1 1 TripAdvisor
Ex(c)iting Game 2 2 TripAdvisor
Exit Newcastle 2 2 TripAdvisor
Exit Strategy 1 1 TripAdvisor
Extremescape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Fathom Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
gamEscape 2 2 TripAdvisor
GR8escape York 2 2 TripAdvisor
Guess House 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Hell in a Cell 1 1 TripAdvisor
Hidden Rooms London 2 2 TripAdvisor
HintHunt 5 2 TripAdvisor
House of Enigma 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
iLocked 0 0 TripAdvisor
Instinctive Escape Games 1 1 TripAdvisor
Jailbreak! 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Keyhunter 3 3 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve Brighton 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve East London 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve South London 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lock’d 2 2 TripAdvisor
Lockdown-Inverness 2 2 TripAdvisor
Lock Down Zone 0 0 TripAdvisor
Locked In A Room 4 1 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 0 0 TripAdvisor
Mission Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor
Mystery Cube 1 1 TripAdvisor
Mystery Squad 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
Namco Funscape Escape Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Noughts and Coffees 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Panic! 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Pirate Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Puzzlair 4 4 TripAdvisor
Puzzle Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
QuestRoom 1 1 TripAdvisor
Quests Factory 0 0 TripAdvisor
Red House Mysteries 1 1 TripAdvisor
Room Escape Adventures 1 1 TripAdvisor
Salisbury Escape Room 1 1 TripAdvisor
Secret Studio 1 1 TripAdvisor
Sherlock Unlock 2 2 TripAdvisor
The Bristol Maze 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
The Escape Network 1 1 TripAdvisor
The Escape Room Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor
The Escape Room Preston 5 5 TripAdvisor
The Gr8 Escape 4 4 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 3 2 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool 2 1 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Manchester 1 1 TripAdvisor
TimeCraft 1 1 TripAdvisor
Time Run 2 1 TripAdvisor
Trapped In 2 2 TripAdvisor
Trapped Up North 0 0 TripAdvisor
We Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor
Zombie in a Room 0 0 (TripAdvisor)

Corrections would be most welcome.

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 pages with the review summaries for every site in the United Kingdom and, separately, for every site in Ireland.

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, Brighton, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham or Sheffield.

Additionally, TripAdvisor now has pages entitled Top Escape Games in United Kingdom and Top Escape Games in Ireland. No obvious changes to the ranking algorithm from the previous month, and not much change to the national rankings; congratulations to the site which remains top of the national list for a fourth consecutive month. Numbers three and four on the chart swap places, one site rises from number ten to number eight and numbers nine and ten are re-entries.

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; see also this piece at Bravofly 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 opinions 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 more laborious than difficult to estimate the number of people who play an exit game over the course of a month, though 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.

This site was uncertain just how busy December would be – after all, it’s Bank Holiday season and people have all manner of parties and other demands on their time. The second half of the month was particularly busy; maybe it’s the “school’s broken up” effect, maybe it’s people taking holiday time from work, travelling to see family and friends and then wanting to take part in leisure activities with them. One notable trend is that this site has revised down the average team size estimate for some games. Some games are built for large teams, some for smaller teams; some games seem to being played by slightly smaller teams than once they were.

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 December 2015, is 470,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 10,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 200,000 and 1,200,000”.) 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, as ever, this site keeps discovering new locations that perhaps it might have found out about earlier!

The League Table: end of November 2015

Bar chart showing improving performance over time

This is the twentieth 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 30th November 2015.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 101 7
Exit game locations known to be open 92 4
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 2 2
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 7 1
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 7 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 11 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 with open-ended time limits and component parts of larger attractions that are played in the same way as conventional exit games. Pop-ups with deliberately very short runs (e.g. Hallowe’en specials, or games run at conventions or festivals) are not counted in this list; games with deliberately finite but longer runs (e.g. Panic!, which awarded a prize to its champion at the end of its sixteen week run) are counted.

A rather more orderly month than October; the UK has seen six additions and only House of Enigma has moved to “temporarily closed” pending further investigations. Four of those additions were definitely sites that opened in November, two of them were a shade older but only just made it to our radar. It’s surprising how low-key a new exit game can be these days.

The Report Card

Site name Number of rooms The reviews
Site name Total number Different games Find reviews
Adventure Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor
Agent November 3 3 TripAdvisor
Bath Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Games Aberdeen 4 3 TripAdvisor
Breakout Games Inverness 3 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Liverpool 5 6 TripAdvisor
Breakout Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor
Can You Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cipher 0 0 TripAdvisor
Clue Finders 2 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Blackpool 4 3 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Brentwood 2 2 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Sunderland 1 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Warrington 5 5 TripAdvisor
clueQuest 7 2 TripAdvisor
Code to Exit 2 2 TripAdvisor
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptic Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptology 2 2 TripAdvisor
Cryptopia 0 0 TripAdvisor
Cyantist 2 2 TripAdvisor
Dr. Knox’s Enigma 2 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Quests 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Belfast 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Dublin 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Clonakilty 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Dublin 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Edinburgh 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Entertainment 8 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Game Brighton 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Glasgow 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hour 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hunt 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Land 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Live 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Newcastle 2 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Plan 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Plan Live 4 4 TripAdvisor
Escape Quest 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Durham 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Plymouth 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Scotland 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escapism 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escapologic 3 3 TripAdvisor
escExit 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
EVAC 1 1 TripAdvisor
Ex(c)iting Game 2 2 TripAdvisor
Exit Newcastle 2 2 TripAdvisor
Exit Strategy 1 1 TripAdvisor
Extremescape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Fathom Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
gamEscape 2 2 TripAdvisor
GR8escape York 2 2 TripAdvisor
Guess House 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Hell in a Cell 1 1 TripAdvisor
Hidden Rooms London 2 2 TripAdvisor
HintHunt 5 2 TripAdvisor
House of Enigma 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
iLocked 0 0 TripAdvisor
Instinctive Escape Games 1 1 TripAdvisor
Jailbreak! 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Keyhunter 3 3 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve Brighton 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve London 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lock’d 2 2 TripAdvisor
Lockdown-Inverness 2 2 TripAdvisor
Lock Down Zone 1 1 TripAdvisor
Locked In A Room 4 1 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 0 0 TripAdvisor
Mission Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor
Mystery Cube 1 1 TripAdvisor
Mystery Squad 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
Namco Funscape Escape Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Panic! 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Puzzlair 4 4 TripAdvisor
Puzzle Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
QuestRoom 1 1 TripAdvisor
Quests Factory 0 0 TripAdvisor
Red House Mysteries 1 1 TripAdvisor
Room Escape Adventures 1 1 TripAdvisor
Salisbury Escape Room 1 1 TripAdvisor
Secret Studio 1 1 TripAdvisor
The Bristol Maze 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
The Escape Network 1 1 TripAdvisor
The Escape Room Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor
The Escape Room Preston 5 5 TripAdvisor
The Gr8 Escape 4 4 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 3 2 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool 2 1 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Manchester 1 1 TripAdvisor
Time Run 2 1 TripAdvisor
Trapped In 2 2 TripAdvisor
Trapped Up North 3 3 TripAdvisor
We Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor
Zombie in a Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)

Corrections would be most welcome.

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 pages with the review summaries for every site in the United Kingdom and, separately, for every site in Ireland.

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, Brighton, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham or Sheffield.

Additionally, TripAdvisor now has pages entitled Top Escape Games in United Kingdom and Top Escape Games in Ireland. Interestingly, the ranking algorithm on this page seems to have changed somewhat; the site is happy to list (for instance) the #2 game in London ahead of the #1 game in other cities; #1s rub up against #3s, #4s and even a #6. That said, the #1s haven’t changed very much from their previous order, which suggests that the changes have not been wholesale. Credit to the same site that has been top of the national list for a third consecutive month.

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; see also this piece at Bravofly 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 opinions 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 more laborious than difficult to estimate the number of people who play an exit game over the course of a month, though 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. As you might expect from the weather – and November was broadly a windy month – indoor businesses like exit games do particularly well at this time of year, and at least five different sites have pushed on considerably from levels that might be considered “ticking on respectably” to levels that might be considered “ticking on well”. Excellent news!

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 November 2015, is 440,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 10,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 180,000 and 1,100,000”.) 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, as ever, this site keeps discovering new locations that perhaps it might have found out about earlier!

The League Table: end of October 2015

Population graphThis is the nineteenth 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 October 2015. It’s taking longer and longer to produce as the number of rooms increases, but that’s no bad thing.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 95 7
Exit game locations known to be open 87 4
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 1 2
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 7 1
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 with open-ended time limits and component parts of larger attractions that are played in the same way as conventional exit games. Pop-ups with deliberately very short runs (e.g. Hallowe’en specials, or games run at conventions or festivals) are not counted in this list; games with deliberately finite but longer runs (e.g. Panic!, which awarded a prize to its champion at the end of its sixteen week run) are counted.

What a month it has been! The UK has seen eleven openings and three closures. That said, there was a reopening which has added one to both of those numbers; goodbye to Escape Hunt in London and hello to Escape Entertainment. For the record, the closest thing to this to have happened previously was the rebranding of AK Escape Room to We Escape in Cork, but this site considers that to have been a continuation of a previous site whereas Escape Entertainment has all-new games and there might yet be another franchise of Escape Hunt in London at some point down the line, so this site considers Escape Entertainment to be a new enterprise.

The two additional permanent closures both move from having been listed in the “temporary closure” category last month. The web site for iLocked has apparently gone for good, and the web site for Escape Land is now being used to sell tickets for Hidden Rooms London, in a good demonstration that a web site may still retain some search engine value, and thus be of some financial value, even once the physical location is no more. In Ireland, Escape Clonakilty confirmed on social media that it is closed for the winter and Quests Factory‘s web site is down to the point where it looks like it isn’t coming back.

The Report Card

Site name Number of rooms The reviews
Site name Total number Different games Find reviews
Adventure Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor
Agent November 3 3 TripAdvisor
Bath Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Games Aberdeen 3 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Games Inverness 3 2 TripAdvisor
Breakout Liverpool 5 6 TripAdvisor
Breakout Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor
Can You Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cipher 0 0 TripAdvisor
Clue Finders 2 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Blackpool 2 2 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Warrington 4 4 TripAdvisor
clueQuest 6 2 TripAdvisor
Code to Exit 1 1 TripAdvisor
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptic Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptology 2 2 TripAdvisor
Cryptopia 0 0 TripAdvisor
Cyantist 2 2 TripAdvisor
Dr. Knox’s Enigma 2 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Quests 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Belfast 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Dublin 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Clonakilty 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Dublin 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Edinburgh 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Entertainment 8 2 (TripAdvisor)
Escape Game Brighton 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Glasgow 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hour 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hunt 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Land 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Live 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Newcastle 2 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Plan 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Plan Live 4 4 (TripAdvisor)
Escape Quest 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Durham 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Plymouth 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Scotland 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escapism 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escapologic 3 3 TripAdvisor
escExit 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
EVAC 1 1 TripAdvisor
Ex(c)iting Game 2 2 TripAdvisor
Exit Newcastle 2 2 TripAdvisor
Exit Strategy 1 1 TripAdvisor
Fathom Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
gamEscape 2 2 TripAdvisor
GR8escape York 2 2 TripAdvisor
Guess House 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Hell in a Cell 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Hidden Rooms London 2 2 TripAdvisor
HintHunt 5 2 TripAdvisor
House of Enigma 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
iLocked 0 0 TripAdvisor
Instinctive Escape Games 1 1 TripAdvisor
Jailbreak! 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Keyhunter 3 3 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve Brighton 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve London 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lock’d 2 2 TripAdvisor
Lockdown-Inverness 2 2 TripAdvisor
Locked In A Room 4 1 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 0 0 TripAdvisor
Mission Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor
Mystery Cube 1 1 TripAdvisor
Mystery Squad 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
Panic! 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Puzzlair 4 4 TripAdvisor
QuestRoom 1 1 TripAdvisor
Puzzle Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Quests Factory 0 0 TripAdvisor
Red House Mysteries 1 1 TripAdvisor
Room Escape Adventures 1 1 TripAdvisor
Salisbury Escape Room 1 1 TripAdvisor
Secret Studio 1 1 TripAdvisor
The Escape Network 1 1 TripAdvisor
The Escape Room Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor
The Escape Room Preston 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 3 2 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool 2 1 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Manchester 1 1 TripAdvisor
Time Run 2 1 TripAdvisor
Trapped In 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
Trapped Up North 3 3 TripAdvisor
We Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor
Zombie in a Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)

Corrections would be most welcome.

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 pages with the review summaries for every site in the United Kingdom and, separately, for every site in Ireland.

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, Brighton, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Inverness, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham or Sheffield.

Additionally, TripAdvisor now has pages entitled Top Escape Games in United Kingdom and Top Escape Games in Ireland. The UK page looks like it lists twelve of the 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. This list is becoming harder to understand; TripAdvisor suggests there are now 24 towns in the UK where an escape game is number one in “Fun and Games” in that town, including one town where two different exit games are number one in “Fun and Games” and number one in “Outdoor Activities” respectively, despite both taking place indoors. (As ever, in the most general terms, 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.) The same site has been top of the national list two months running.

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; see also this piece at Bravofly 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 opinions 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 more laborious than difficult to estimate the number of people who play an exit game over the course of a month, though 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. October was slightly stronger than September, but many of the new sites opened fairly late in the month and so contributed relatively little to the overall total, though their contributions in November onwards may well be rather more voluminous. Close to half of the sites seem to do (at least close to) half of their weekly business on a Saturday.

This site quotes some fairly broad error bars for its estimate of the number of players below and it’s worth explaining why. If sites tend to sell very many games on the day or very close to the day, the true number will tend to be higher in the range. If sites tend to pretend that they have sold more games than is the case when really they are closing the rooms for staff training, the true number will tend to be lower in the range. There’s a factor accounting for repeat players; asking figures among self-selecting fans who choose to visit a site like this would be unrepresentative, but the assumption is that a considerable majority of players play only one game and that the outliers don’t bring the average up very high yet. Different games cater for different group sizes, which is factored in, and the assumption made here is that it’s reasonable to take average group sizes per game based on each site’s group photos.

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 October 2015, is 400,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 10,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 160,000 and 1,000,000”.) 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, as ever, this site keeps discovering new locations that perhaps it might have found out about earlier!

The League Table: end of September 2015

Silhouette in front of a graph

This is the eighteenth instalment of a monthly feature (slightly delayed by an annoyingly persistent cough as the aftermath to a very minor cold) 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 30th September 2015.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 84 7
Exit game locations known to be open 76 5
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 3 2
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 5 0
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 8 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 11 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 with open-ended time limits and component parts of larger attractions that are played in the same way as conventional exit games. Pop-ups with deliberately very short runs (e.g. Hallowe’en specials, or games run at conventions or festivals) are not counted in this list; games with deliberately finite but longer runs (e.g. Panic!, which awarded a prize to its champion at the end of its sixteen week run) are counted.

An unusual degree of turnover this month; six openings in the UK, four closures. One of these is a deliberate satisfying closure; Panic! announced a sixteen week run and stuck to it. (That said, the infrastructure will be used for Panic! Unlocked, one of the attractions – though, presumably, not in an exit game format – within the same company’s Hellfest scare attraction.) The other news is less good: Guess House said goodbye on Facebook, whereas Escape Land and iLocked have just made themselves unavailable for booking. The former looks pretty permanent; the latter two look temporary, until more evidence arrives to point the balance one way or the other.

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 0 0 TripAdvisor
Clue Finders 2 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Blackpool 1 1 TripAdvisor
Clue HQ Warrington 3 3 TripAdvisor
clueQuest 6 2 TripAdvisor
Code to Exit 1 1 TripAdvisor
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptic Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptology 2 2 TripAdvisor
Cryptopia 0 0 TripAdvisor
Cyantist 1 1 TripAdvisor
Dr. Knox’s Enigma 2 1 TripAdvisor
Enigma Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Belfast 1 1 TripAdvisor
ESCAP3D Dublin 0 0 TripAdvisor
Escape Clonakilty 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Dublin 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Edinburgh 3 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Game Brighton 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Glasgow 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hour 3 2 TripAdvisor
Escape Hunt 10 3 TripAdvisor
Escape Land 0 0 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 Durham 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escape Rooms Plymouth 2 2 TripAdvisor
Escapism 1 1 TripAdvisor
Escapologic 3 3 TripAdvisor
escExit 1 1 (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 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Hidden Rooms London 2 2 TripAdvisor
HintHunt 5 2 TripAdvisor
House of Enigma 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
iLocked 0 0 TripAdvisor
Instinctive Escape Games 1 1 TripAdvisor
Jailbreak! 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Keyhunter 3 3 TripAdvisor
Lady Chastity’s Reserve Brighton 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Lady Chastity’s Reserve London 1 1 TripAdvisor
Lock’d 2 2 TripAdvisor
Lockdown-Inverness 2 2 TripAdvisor
Locked In A Room 4 1 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 0 0 TripAdvisor
Mystery Cube 1 1 TripAdvisor
Mystery Squad 2 2 (TripAdvisor)
Panic! 0 0 (TripAdvisor)
Puzzlair 2 2 TripAdvisor
Puzzle Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)
Quests Factory 0 0 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 Escape Room Preston 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
Trapped Up North 3 3 TripAdvisor
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor
Zombie in a Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor)

Corrections would be most welcome.

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. Fair warning: that page will probably end up being split into separate pages for the UK and Ireland soon.

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. Brighton should hopefully get added to that list soon, too.

Additionally, TripAdvisor now has pages entitled Top Escape Games in United Kingdom and Top Escape Games in Ireland. The UK page looks like it lists fifteen of the 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 four 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”, and a fourth is listed as top for their town and doesn’t make it onto the national list for no clear reason whatsoever. (As a genreal consideration, 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.) The same site has been top of the national list three months running.

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; see also 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 opinions 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 more laborious than difficult to estimate the number of people who play an exit game over the course of a month, though 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. September was even stronger than August, with growing sites continuing to contribute ever more strongly to the overall total – and at least four sites adding new games in the next fortnight or so. October may be close to prime time for exit games, particularly those which aim to scare, then it’s all downhill to Christmas party season.

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 September 2015, is 360,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 10,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 150,000 and 1,000,000”.) 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, as ever, this site keeps discovering new locations that perhaps it might have found out about earlier!

The League Table: end of August 2015

Abstract but attractive-looking three-dimensional graph showing growth

This is the seventeenth 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 August 2015.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 78 7
Exit game locations known to be open 74 5
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 1 2
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 3 0
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 11 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 10 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 with open-ended time limits and component parts of larger attractions that are played in the same way as conventional exit games. Pop-ups with deliberately very short runs (e.g. Hallowe’en specials, or games run at conventions or festivals) are not counted in this list; games with deliberately finite but longer runs (e.g. Panic!, which will award a prize to its champion at the end of its sixteen week run) are counted.

The number of sites open in the UK has increased by four in August; however, this reflects only two openings in August and two low-key openings in previous months that this site had not discovered promptly. Happily, the number of games under construction has never been higher with at least five openings confidently expected in September and more already given opening dates in October. Much less happily, Quests Factory in Waterford seems to have deleted its web site and Facebook presence; worse still, it has picked up a TripAdvisor review that suggests it may have sold at least one Groupon deal and not honoured it.

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 5 6 TripAdvisor
Breakout Manchester 5 5 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 4 4 TripAdvisor
clueQuest 6 2 TripAdvisor
Code to Exit 1 1 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
escExit 1 1 (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 2 2 (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 3 2 TripAdvisor
Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool 2 1 TripAdvisor
Time Run 2 1 TripAdvisor
Trapped Up North 3 3 TripAdvisor
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor
Zombie in a Room 1 1 (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 thirteen 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.) Top of this national list is the same site as last month after a period of instability.

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; see also 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 opinions 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 more laborious than difficult to estimate the number of people who play an exit game over the course of a month, though 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. August attendances appear to have been strong and the market is back to the point where the industry tends to have its best month yet, month on month. The weather was not so hot and it was school holiday season. Edinburgh sites seemed to do very well out of the Festival and some of the larger London sites appear to have had a very good month too.

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 August 2015, is 320,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 10,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 120,000 and 900,000”.) 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, as ever, this site keeps discovering new locations that perhaps it might have found out about earlier!

The League Table: end of July 2015

"Who dares wins" graph

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!

The League Table: end of June 2015

Graphs suggesting growth

This is the fifteenth instalment of an occasional feature to act as a status report on the exit games in the UK and Ireland. On its own it means little, but by now hopefully it can be 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 30th June 2015.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 68 7
Exit game locations known to be open 64 6
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 2 1
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 2 0
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 7 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 8 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.

Four known openings since May, all at the start of the month – and all July’s known openings are at the start of the month as well, which is noteworthy. Specifically considering the UK only, looking at the half-year trends for the last five half-years (for a half-year is practically a generation in UK exit games) the trend has been that the number of known open exit games has slightly more than doubled every half-year. 64 now, 30 half a year ago, 14 a year ago, 7 a year and a half ago, 3 two years ago and 1 two and a half years ago. OK, 14 is exactly double 7, rather than “slightly more than double” 7, but that’s within tolerance for a rough trend.

This site will go on the record as expecting the “slightly more than doubling” trend not to continue in the UK for another half-year. It might well be the case that future months see the rate of expansion continue to grow, but it doesn’t expect to see the 64 grow to 130+ by the end of the year, which would require another ten-plus locations open per month, on average. On the other hand, this site didn’t expect the trend to continue for this half-year, either, though it didn’t say so explicitly – “economists have correctly predicted nine of the last five recessions” and all that – and another sixty-plus locations in half a year could well be possible if a major chain (say, cinemas or bowling alleys) were to get on board.

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 4 2 TripAdvisor
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cryptopia 1 1 TripAdvisor
Cyantist 1 1 TripAdvisor
Dr. Knox’s Enigma 2 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 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
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 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 thirteen 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 (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.) This list is dynamic but slow-moving; a new national number one “best-reviewed game” has been crowned compared to last month, though the previous champ was still on top as recently as June 27th.

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 (for instance, thinking bob‘s comparisons, the QMSM room comparisons and Geek Girl Up North site comparions). There was also Buzzfeed’s list, though it’s not clear that that had any sort of deliberate ordering. 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.

What would a thousand players per day look like? There are two very popular sites in Manchester that give extremely convincing evidence of hosting sixty groups per day between them, on a bad day, and five very popular sites in London that, combined, must sell tickets to over a hundred groups per day, even taking into account that two of them are closed on Mondays. On top of that, there are also popular sites in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol and more. It all soon adds up.

So with 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 June 2015, is 260,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 5,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 100,000 and 700,000”.) 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!

The League Table: end of May 2015

Three-dimensional blue bar chartThis is the fourteenth instalment of an occasional feature to act as a status report on the exit games in the UK and Ireland. On its own it means little, but by now hopefully it can be part of the basis of a survey of growth over time. It reflects a snapshot of the market as it was at the end of May 31st, before the opening of three sites on June 1st and another on June 5th. (So it’s already out of date…!)

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 64 7
Exit game locations known to be open 60 6
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 2 1
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 2 0
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 6 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 5 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.

There are more changes than might at first appear in this month’s numbers:

  • Dr. Knox’s Enigma is now considered to have opened in late April;
  • Jailbreak! is open for a second season, probably since late April, with no clear indication when this might end.
  • On the other hand, Make A Break is now regarded as temporarily closed – possibly as closed as Cipher, which has now been “between its first and second seasons” for over a year – because its Facebook and bookings pages seem to be down for now.
  • Time Run has a scheduled closing date, which might well be extended;
  • Panic! has a scheduled closing date, where a second run would appear not to be likely to follow immediately afterwards by virtue of apparent plans for other attractions to follow in the same building – but, perhaps, some sort of Panic! 2 might occur at some point in 2016.
  • As ever, there might well be other sites open that haven’t made it onto this site’s radar.

That said, this site is going to make a dangerous claim: it knows no reason why the map, the list, the Timeline and the reviews aggregator should now not be up-to-date. If you know otherwise, please get in touch.

The Report Card

Site name Number of rooms The reviews
Site name Total number Different games Find reviews Quantity Quality
Adventure Rooms 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Agent November 3 3 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
AK Escape Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Bath Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Breakout Games Aberdeen 3 2 TripAdvisor Some Excellent reviews
Breakout Games Inverness 3 2 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Breakout Liverpool 4 4 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Breakout Manchester 7 6 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
Can You Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Cipher 1 1 TripAdvisor No Early reviews
Clue Finders 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Clue HQ Blackpool 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Clue HQ Warrington 3 3 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
clueQuest 4 2 TripAdvisor Tonnes of Brilliant reviews
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Cryptopia 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Cyantist 2 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Dr. Knox’s Enigma 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
ESCAP3D Belfast 1 1 TripAdvisor Many Excellent reviews
ESCAP3D Dublin 2 1 TripAdvisor Few Superior reviews
Escape Clonakilty 2 2 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Escape Dublin 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Escape Edinburgh 3 3 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
Escape Glasgow 3 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Escape Hour 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Hunt 10 3 TripAdvisor Many Excellent reviews
Escape Land 1 1 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Escape Live 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Newcastle 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Plan Live 4 4 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Escape Quest 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Excellent reviews
Escape Rooms Plymouth 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Escapologic 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Ex(c)iting Game 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Excellent reviews
Exit Newcastle 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Exit Strategy 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
gamEscape 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Excellent reviews
GR8escape York 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Guess House 3 3 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
HintHunt 5 2 TripAdvisor Tonnes of Brilliant reviews
iLocked 1 1 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Jailbreak! 1 1 (TripAdvisor) Very few Specific reviews
Keyhunter 3 3 TripAdvisor Some Superior reviews
Lady Chastity’s Reserve 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Lock’d 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Lockdown-Inverness 2 2 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Locked In Games 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
LockIn Escape 3 3 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Logiclock 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Lost & Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Make A Break 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Excellent reviews
Mystery Cube 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Mystery Squad 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Puzzlair 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Puzzle Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Quests Factory 2 2 TripAdvisor Very Few Early reviews
Room Escape Adventures 1 1 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Salisbury Escape Room 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Secret Studio 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
The Escape Room Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
The Gr8 Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
The Great Escape Game 3 3 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
The Live Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
The Room 5 5 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Tick Tock Unlock Glasgow 2 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Tick Tock Unlock Leeds 2 1 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Time Run 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor Few Excellent reviews

This needs to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. 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. However, 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. If those aren’t enough for you, or if you’re interested in comparisons for exit games in cities where they’re the only one, this site also has a page with the details for every site.

Additionally, just to put this out there, TripAdvisor now has a page entitled Top Escape Games in United Kingdom. Evidence suggests that it lists the thirteen 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 (arguable) and a third is listed as “other fun and games”. (It’s also 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.) The interesting question is which order the games are listed in, within their category of “#1 in town”… and whether that order will change over time. Hard to know if there’s anything to be read into this, other that there are at least 13 (and, in practice, at least 15) towns with exit games listed as their local number one for fun.

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 (for instance, thinking bob‘s comparisons, the QMSM room comparisons and Geek Girl Up North site comparions). If you have your own UK ranking list, please speak up and it shall be included in future months.

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.

So with 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 May 2015, is 230,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 5,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 85,000 and 650,000”.) 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!

The League Table: end of April 2015

3-D bar chart with broadly increasing trend

This is the thirteenth instalment of an occasional feature to act as a status report on the exit games in the UK and Ireland. On its own it means little, but by now hopefully it can be part of the basis of a survey of growth over time.

The Census

Category Number in the UK Number in Ireland
Exit game locations known to have opened 57 5
Exit game locations known to be open 53 4
Exit game locations in various states of temporary closure 2 1
Exit game locations known to have closed permanently 2 0
Exit game locations showing convincing evidence of being under construction 6 0
Exit game locations showing unconvincing evidence of being under construction 5 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.

This month’s count includes a location that opened in December but which this site did not find out about until a week or so ago, which is why the wording states “known to have opened”. There might be others open that haven’t made it onto this site’s radar, but hopefully not. There is at least one location where this site is unsure if it has opened or not – but as there is no obvious, conclusive social media push and there has been no response to e-mail, this site is erring on the side of “not open yet”. Two more sites are expected to open on May 1st and so have not been included in these figures but will be included in next month’s figures.

The Report Card

Site name Number of rooms The reviews
Site name Total number Different games Find reviews Quantity Quality
Adventure Rooms 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Agent November 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
AK Escape Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Bath Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Breakout Games Aberdeen 3 2 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Breakout Liverpool 3 3 TripAdvisor Few Excellent reviews
Breakout Manchester 7 6 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
Can You Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Cipher 1 1 TripAdvisor No Early reviews
Clue Finders 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Clue HQ Blackpool 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Clue HQ Warrington 3 3 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
clueQuest 4 2 TripAdvisor Tonnes of Brilliant reviews
Crack The Code Sheffield 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Cryptopia 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Cyantist 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
ESCAP3D Belfast 1 1 TripAdvisor Many Excellent reviews
ESCAP3D Dublin 2 1 TripAdvisor Few Superior reviews
Escape Dublin 1 1 TripAdvisor No Early reviews
Escape Edinburgh 3 3 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
Escape Glasgow 3 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Escape Hour 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Hunt 10 3 TripAdvisor Many Excellent reviews
Escape Land 1 1 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Escape Live 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Newcastle 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Plan Live 4 4 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Escape Quest 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Escape Rooms 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Excellent reviews
Escape Rooms Plymouth 1 1 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Ex(c)iting Game 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Excellent reviews
Exit Newcastle 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Exit Strategy 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
gamEscape 1 1 TripAdvisor No Early reviews
GR8escape York 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
HintHunt 5 2 TripAdvisor Tonnes of Brilliant reviews
Jailbreak! 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Specific reviews
Keyhunter 3 3 TripAdvisor Some Superior reviews
Lady Chastity’s Reserve 1 1 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Lock’d 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Locked In Games 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
LockIn Escape 3 3 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Logiclock 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Lost & Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Make A Break 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Excellent reviews
Mystery Cube 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
Mystery Squad 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Puzzlair 2 2 TripAdvisor Many Brilliant reviews
Puzzle Room 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
Room Escape Adventures 1 1 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Salisbury Escape Room 1 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Secret Studio 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
The Escape Room Manchester 5 5 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
The Gr8 Escape 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
The Great Escape Game 2 2 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
The Live Escape 1 1 TripAdvisor Few Brilliant reviews
The Room 5 5 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Tick Tock Unlock Glasgow 1 1 TripAdvisor Very few Early reviews
Tick Tock Unlock Leeds 1 1 TripAdvisor Loads of Brilliant reviews
Tick Tock Unlock Liverpool 2 1 TripAdvisor Some Brilliant reviews
Time Run 1 1 (TripAdvisor) No Early reviews
XIT 4 4 TripAdvisor Few Excellent reviews

This needs to be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. 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. However, 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, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle or Sheffield. If those aren’t enough for you, or if you’re interested in comparisons for exit games in cities where they’re the only one, this site also has a page with the details for every site.

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 (for instance, thinking bob‘s comparisons, the recently-updated QMSM room comparisons and Geek Girl Up North site comparions). If you have your own UK ranking list, please speak up and it shall be included in future months.

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.

So with 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 April 2015, is 200,000. (This estimate is quoted to the nearest 5,000, but the site would not like to claim more confidence than “between 75,000 and 550,000”.) 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 each of the last three months, this site has discovered a new location that it might have found in previous months.