October 2014 Dealwatch: coupons and discounts to play exit games for less

Green and black "SAVE" star logoIt might be wise to think of Dealwatch as officially no longer a “once per month” event, but more when there are sufficiently many and/or interesting deals to justify there being a post. This month, there are a couple of competitions worth mentioning as well with free games as prizes. The usual rules are in operation:

  • Terms and conditions doubtless apply and this site takes no responsibility for deals that fall through for whatever reason. These are not exclusive in any shape or form;
  • Many of these deals only permit a limited number of vouchers to be purchased and then the deal will expire. It’s quite possible that deals may expire between being published below and your attempt to use them;
  • This site does not attract any commission, whether you click through and purchase the deals or not.

Puzzlair of Bristol have a LivingSocial voucher operational right now. Choose between a £30 voucher for three, a £36 voucher for four and a £40 voucher for five. A cancellation/re-scheduling policy of 72 hours applies and the voucher is subject to forfeiture. Any vouchers must be enjoyed by Sunday 18th January, 2015.

Bath Escape of Bath have an eBay deal operational right now. This is selling ten vouchers to play its Haunted House escape room for £50 instead of the usual £78. However, these vouchers are only valid between 11am and 9pm on Tuesday to Friday; weekend games are excluded and the site closes on Mondays. You must arrive 15 minutes before the booked game time, and Bath Escape’s usual bonus birthday cake if someone is celebrating on the day does not apply.

The Great Escape Game of Sheffield is a site not previously mentioned and has not yet opened; bookings are not yet available, but the site may open in the middle of the month. Promotional ticket prices are 5 players for £70, 4 players for £60 and 3 players for £48, but sign up on their site for 10% off your first booking. Bear in mind that games are run to a 45 minute time limit rather than the frequent hour deadline.

Can You Escape? of Edinburgh are also not yet open, but their social media are ramping back up once more. Cleverly, they have tweeted that they will be “giving away #freetickets for our VIP week to the first person who guesses our location”. If you like an exit game, you’ll likely like a treasure hunt as well, so this promotion may well hit the spot, and further clues are eagerly awaited.

The Gr8 Escape of Belfast also have a competition on social media. Much as they are running a Hallowe’en-themed room this month, they will be running a Christmas-themed room in December, and they have made a Facebook post calling for suggestions for a name for it. The suggestion with most “Like”s by the end of the month wins. Surely a cunning way to attract attention!

Lock and LOL of London posted to this site’s Facebook page (!! – but it’s a good way of doing it, and certainly welcome) that if you use the code “SHERLOCKED” you can book their Moriarty’s Laboratory game for £49.75 instead of £199 for a group of up to 5 people. It’s not clear how long this discount code will be valid for, but it’s worth a try.

As usual, if you know of other coupons, deals, vouchers or competitions, please send them through. If your site has a offer not listed above, please don’t assume the worst; get in touch and this site will happily spread the good news. (Alternatively, if you would prefer that this site does not list your coupon, or if the details of the offer are mangled, that’s fine too; again, please get in touch.)

What’s happening this weekend

Puzzlebomb logoA few quick news stories while I’m passing:

I have been extremely slack in never linking to Puzzlebomb other than in the blogroll. This is a monthly assortment of hand-crafted puzzles, and it’s admirable for its breadth of focus. The people who write it have a puzzle hunt tradition, with rather a considerable degree of success, and it shows. You do get logic puzzles and maths puzzles sometimes, but there are very usually word puzzles as well, and at their best the whole package can be tremendously original. I particularly enjoyed the current April edition (.pdf file) with an ambitious arithmetic wordsearch. Solve it now before the solution is posted at the start of May, then enjoy the previous 2+ years of puzzles in the archive.

Puzzlair of Bristol have an amusing promotion right now; book by May 4th, to play before June 4th, using the coupon code FORCE and get 15% off.

Looking further ahead, the dates have been announced for this year’s US Sudoku Qualifier and US Puzzle Championship. They’re on May 3rd and May 17th respectively, which I reckon feel rather earlier in the year than usual, and both contests start at 6pm BST. For the longest time, the US Puzzle Championship was the only contest of its type open to the public at large, so it has long been extremely popular and remains a highlight on the calendar.

From Friday 25th April (or, er, today) until Monday 28th April, the fourth leg of the World Puzzle Federation’s Puzzle Grand Prix series is taking place. This leg is set by solvers from the Czech Republic, who have been an extremely strong presence since the world championships started over twenty years ago. The instruction booklet suggests there will be 16 puzzles to solve in the usual 90 minutes, and they look likely to be good ones to me.

I’ll probably be solving the Puzzle GP on Sunday or Monday, because of a certain little something happening tomorrow called DASH 6, which I believe I may have mentioned once or twice…

All the news: from the exit games

news3To conclude our round-up of news, let’s check the ten known exit game sites in the UK and Ireland for their news:

The biggest news comes from Cipher Entertainment in Leicester, who will be temporarily closing their Chamber Escape game from 26th April in preparation for what they call season two. “We hope you adventurers are ready for the new game, with new tricks, new decorations, new ways of gaming and so on! So be ready, Champions! For we defy you all, you will not escape that easily again.” There are still a few spaces available for April, though none yet for May. Their new pricing structure reveals one-third off discounts for booking for weekdays, and one-eighth off discounts for booking for parties of 6+. More news about the reopening when it becomes available.

Make A Break of Manchester have extended their opening offers until 20th April; three-player teams earn £5 off per player, four- and five- player teams earn £3 off per player. Only a couple of TripAdvisor reviews so far, but they look very promising.

Similarly, Puzzlair of Bristol have an Easter Egg discount promotion offering 15% off for parties of three or more, if you book before Easter Monday, which I reckon is 21st April.

Over the Irish Sea, XIT of Dublin recently used their Facebook page to announce the opening of their fourth different game. “Imagine a world where every sin is an illusion of a virtue that guides you through logical steps to get hold of the Philosophers’ Stone. Is seeing really believing?” I like the theme – and while I know of another site where four teams can play at once, I believe XIT is unique in having four different games to play. An unusual and delightful theme and the two photos they have revealed look rather gorgeous.

Also news from Escap3d of Belfast: they are currently number one attraction out of 137 in Belfast; very intrigued to see a review mentioning the development of a second room at some point. The admission fee is now £45/team, with soft drinks included, but the site is open seven days a week and can accept teams of six as well as 2-5.

Lastly, very interesting to see this Indiegogo project to crowd-fund another exit game, QuestRoom, set to open in London. A couple of weeks in, it doesn’t appear to have got too far towards its goal, but the “flexible funding” option means that all the donations will go towards funding the site, with the campaign saying “Our goal is to reach £15,000 which would cover the start up the game and the first couple of months’ essential costs. The plan is flexible; we’ll find a bank loan for the missing amount if we need to.” The perks for donating include vouchers for play. There doesn’t seem to be much to go on, but there is a Facebook page and you could try asking questions there.

If you know something I don’t, please send the news through!

Mazebase, the company behind two UK exit rooms

Mazebase game logopuzzlair3
Yesterday’s post, about discovering the existence of Puzzlair, came about as a result of finding out that Mazebase existed. Mazebase are the company who designed HintHunt in London and Puzzlair in Bristol, and also have a room in Debrecen, Hungary and another in Athens, Greece. However, over the years, they have developed seven different rooms in total. Perhaps some of the others will come to the UK or Ireland some day.

If you’ve ever considered starting your own exit room, Mazebase have some packages available. They’re reasonably priced, considering how popular the rooms are, though I imagine the rental costs that cannot be included in a package are likely to be the major part of the expense of running the business. As a player, you might at first think that the price of playing an exit game is high; however, if you consider the rent, business rates and labour expenditures, to name but three expenses, I get the impression that there is no room at all for the operators to cut their prices and that the profit margins may well be very thin as it is, even despite how popular the games are.

A famous advert for a breakfast company says “We don’t make cereal for anybody else”; it is unclear whether any of the other exit room operators would be prepared to offer their services as well as Mazebase. If you’re interested in starting your own exit room, I guess it would be worth talking to the operators of other existing sites already and seeing whether they, too, might also be prepared to provide their services.

I hope to get to interview the people behind Mazebase before long, and any other operators who might be willing to talk about the services they can offer as well as the games that they run.

Puzzlair in Bristol

puzzlair-logoPart of the reason for this web site to exist is that it’s difficult to find all the exit games that are available right now. It took me a couple of months to find out about Puzzlair, an exit game lair of puzzles that opened for business in central Bristol at the start of the year.

The site currently has two games, John Monroe’s Room and the Laboratory of Dr. Lev Pasted. (Rumour found elsewhere suggests that the site will have two more rooms soon; it is not clear whether these will host other games.) Subject to confirmation, it seems likely that the John Monroe’s Room game is the same as one of the games that has proved so popular at HintHunt in London, but the Lev Pasted game is, so far, unique within the UK and Ireland.

Early reviews are extremely positive for both rooms, so the John Monroe room experience is likely to match the one available in London. Bristol is already served by Cryptopia, which is also getting very strong reviews; if the times and availability work out, why not try them both while you’re there? No reason why London should be the only city with two exit games!

Psst! I suspect this won’t hang around forever, but I’ve found a social purchasing web site deal for preferential rates at Puzzlair while the site is new.