Here’s a collection of stories of exit games making their impression on the public.
- This isn’t just an article about newspaper stories; Pirate Escape of Whitley Bay, near Newcastle, was recently featured on Made in Tyne and Wear, the local (Freeview channel 8) station broadcasting from Pontop Pyke and its relays. You may be able to catch up to see the show from 12th January.
- The Panic Room of Gravesend picked up two pieces of local newspaper coverage for its launch at the start of the month; the piece in the News Shopper talks about the team behind the site and their background, while the piece in Kent Online discusses their future plans: as players, they plan to enjoy seven London rooms on Valentine’s Day (sounds like an excellent way to spend it to this site), and as owners, they think Gravesend has more to offer.
- Clue HQ Birmingham has announced an opening date of February 19th on Facebook, but already they have earnt coverage in the Birmingham Mail. The exciting suggestion is that the site will eventually grow to feature a total of nine games – which, as claimed, would make it the largest site in the country (after The Escape Hunt Experience with ten became Escape Entertainment London with eight!) unless another site beats them to it.
- Less good news in Reading, where one site’s plans to adapt part of a listed building for an exit game were not accepted. That said, fingers crossed that they can be successful adapting another property and it’s not as if they are the only metaphorical game in town.
- This site has chosen not yet to feature the opening of Oubliette, though there is rather more of it to come and there was mention of its crowdfunding campaign. That said, it has opened and earnt coverage on alphr with a stronger discussion of the influences on the game than most pieces of commentary. Recommended.
- The Great Escape Game of Sheffield were covered in The Star of Sheffield, discussing the site’s founding and the employment that they offer to others.
- A little further away, The Headlands Gamble is a travelling puzzle adventure that this site mentioned a couple of months ago; the Style magazine of the New York Times were only a little behind. ((Edited to add:)) Dan Egnor of the Escape Room Directory also took part and posted about his experience. More adventure-y than puzzle-y, Dan writes “Some rough pacing and occasional consistency slip-ups aside, we loved it“.
- Again following up an earlier story, today is the deadline for submissions for the puzzle on the GCHQ Director’s Christmas card… and the several stages of puzzles that followed on from it. Apparently 600,000 people followed the link from the QR Code to get further within, but only 30,000 entries had been made to the final fifth stage of the puzzle, as of a couple of days before the deadline, with none being completely correct. This attracted coverage from newspapers including the Guardian, with discussion of how much fun it can be to solve puzzles with your friends, mentioning no Pints, and the Telegraph discuss the puzzles within the last part. The complete solution is expected to be published in early February; that will certainly be worth looking forward to!
Dealwatch is an occasional feature which, as the name suggests, looks out for special offers that exit games are promoting. (Very occasional; the last time it happened was January.) Some ground rules apply:
“Whitley Bay is a town near the sea, with sunshine, seagulls and sand. With shops that sell ices and bright-coloured kites that will fly from a string in your hand…” Not quite, though there might well be some cockle shells to find somewhere. (Ask Ken, he’s good at finding things, like this site. Thank you, sir!)