Welcome to your “weekly” fix of UK and Irish escape room news covering everything that this site has discovered in the last three weeks! Apologies for the delay – I had a busy few weeks preparing for ERIC, the UK escape room conference.
Exit Games is always on the look-out for new rooms or venues that are opening, references in the media or anything else that might be of interest to the readers, so please do send an email if you spot anything of interest. That applies to owners too – feel free to send me your news for inclusion here. Don’t be shy!
On to the news
- International
- Ever wondered how many games you might be able to play in a day? Well, if the answer is “more than 23” then you might want to have a go at breaking the world record. There’s a lot of complexity to the attempt (see the interview on Room Escape Artist for more details) but a US-based team set the initial bar at 23 during a recent trip to Russia including multiple games that lasted more than sixty minutes, some that required Russian language (they had one Russian-speaker) and a failure which more than shows that these games were definitely not easy! I’m sure there are a few UK-based players who’ll be setting their sights on bettering that though!
- National
- As mentioned above ERIC 2018 took place last week with the good and the great from across the UK (and a few from overseas) heading in to find out about what’s happening in the world of escape rooms and catch up with the rest of the community. Big thanks to all of you who spoke including Pier Pressure, TimeTrap, The Panic Room, The Escapement, Exciting Escapes, Bewilder Box, ClueCapers, Locked In Edinburgh, The Game is Now, Clockwork Dog, History Mystery, Co-decode, Clue Adventures, THE ROOM, Escape Diem, Twisted Rooms, Nowescape and Really Fun (and I guess me too, speaking once as The Logic Escapes Me and once as Exit Games). And of course the team behind it all – Sarah, Simon and David!
- For those of you who like to look at numbers, Escape Hunt posted their interim results for the first half of the year. The bottom line is a £3.8m loss in the last six months with revenue rising to £800k. They’re about to expand from three to eight sites as well as adding more rooms, so perhaps it’s not quite the gloomy picture those numbers might initially suggest – certainly the market thought so with the share price remaining pretty static.
- Fancy a zombie experience with escape room elements? Wicked Experiences are in the middle of a tour that’s already taken in Chatham and Blackburn and is about to hit Swansea, Brighton then Hemel Hempstead
- East Midlands
- Escape are launching a new site: Escape Lincoln will offer three of their games – The Magic Emporium, Contagion and, a brand new offering, Sherlock: The Initiation.
- The Reading-based company Deadlocked opened their second venue. Deadlocked Rooms Northampton will have entirely new games with the first two offerings being The Houdini Challenge and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
- Want to know more about the mind behind some of the favourite games in the country? Left Lion, a Nottingham-focused online magazine, interviewed Simon Stokes from Escapologic about his creative process.
- South West England
- Taunton looks like it might be getting an escape room venue according to this local news article.
- Lock & Code of Weston-super-Mare have teamed up with the Museum of Somerset to offer a pair of escape rooms – School Days and The Somerset Emerald. Initial indications are that there’s only a short run committed to, so jump in quick if you want to be sure of playing.
- Escape Hunt Bristol opened its third game (and fifth room) Blackbeard’s Treasure. After opening up a pairs of Our Finest Hour and the Fourth Samurai across the country, it looks like Escape Hunt are starting to diversify with this new game in Bristol and a couple of different ones slated for Reading and Oxford.
- Salisbury Escape Rooms closed Salisbury CSI but they’ll be back soon enough with a new game, the build for which is already well underway.
- West Midlands (thanks to Paul for the updates!)
- Clockwork Escapes are opening a temporary room for Hallowe’en. A Will to Live is their new game which builds on the story of “Where There’s a Will” but is very much a new experience with new puzzles.
- Room Release, which shared the same building as Clockwork Escapes, closed The Archaeologists with no indication on their website about whether they’ll return in the future.
- Xscape Now opened their fourth room – The Bank Job – with #5 due to follow for Christmas.
- North West England
- Red Herring Escape Rooms is another Carlisle-based escape room, following on from the launch of Total Enigma a couple of weeks ago. Their first game is Sherlock but they have plans to open War Room and Asylum before year end.
- Bury is obviously the place to be with a third venue opening up in the town of just 60,000 inhabitants. Compendium doesn’t have a website yet but it looks like they’ve got their premises and started building with an eye to opening pretty soon.
- South East England
- Pier Pressure opened their third game, Raver Quest, which sees you take on a 90s themed challenge and, judging by the video, is going to be a party from start to finish.
- The Room Maidstone has launched its website with their first game, Dr Hector Stein, due to open in October.
- The Panic Room Gravesend 2 opened The Sacrifice, another van-based game which you can either hire for that special celebration or play in the centre of Gravesend.
- Escape Hunt Oxford opened their doors with two games – Fourth Samurai and Blackbeard’s Treasure
- Breakout Ramsgate opened their first game, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Ireland
- Escape Room Can You Get Out is probably the name of a new venue in Ireland although I’m not entirely sure! There are three new games on the horizon for visitors to Killarney – surprising because the population is just 15,000 and yet its the third company to open.
- Yorkshire and the Humber
- If you’re into your Rugby League, you might be interested to hear that the Leeds Rhinos took on Yorkshire Carnegie at Escape Hunt in Leeds.
- Scotland (as ever, thanks to Jackie for keeping me in the loop with Scotland… and Ireland too)
- Catch 22 is a new venue that opened in Glasgow last month. The first game is called The Citadel and sees you trying to get to safety after pirates attack your ship.
- Three Wise Monkeys is a popup taking place at the Britannia Panopticon in Glasgow. An iconic setting – let’s hope it’s an iconic game!
- Escape Rooms Scotland Edinburgh closed their doors last month after almost two years in the city.
- London
- After a THREE year break without opening a new game, Lock’d are back with The House of Alastair Moon. No word yet on what the game’s like but with such a large gap, you’ve got to hope they’ve had time to create something special.
- Not strictly escape rooms but The Crystal Maze announced a crowdfunding campaign and move to
West Londonthe West End. Perhaps not the most exciting news but certainly suggests that they’re doing OK if they’re willing to up sticks and build a bigger location in the heart of London.
- Wales
- Escape Rooms Newport announced that they can now run their games in Welsh thanks to help from Welsh for Business
- The Escape Game Carmarthen opened Oubliette
- East of England (Thanks to Kelly for some of these updates!)
- It’s been a while in the making but Doomsday Games have launched in Colchester with the game Apocalypse. To help build up their business, they’re running a five minute mini-game at a local haunt attraction.
- You might have heard of Harwich Escape Rooms. Well, they’ve decided to rename themselves to Tricky Escape and, at the same time, launch a second branch – Tricky Escape Clacton which is due to open in December.
- Escape Basildon have opened their doors with two games – The Magic Emporium and Overthrone. The Escape Empire just keeps growing!
- Blog posts
- The Logic Escapes Me
- Lock Us Up
- The Disco Messiah
- Unlock & Roll
- The Escape Game Traveller
- Brit of an Escape Habit
- Clue HQ – Hellevator
- Escape Live – Time Machine
- Enigma Retford – The Legend of Catequil
- Cryptology Sheffield – First Contact
- Lakes Escapes – Dr Frankenscraft’s Monster. ROOM 300!!
- Kong Escape Room – Mountain Rescue
- Escape Barrow – Abandoned Factory
- Escape Barrow – Ascension
- Cliffhanger Rooms – The Pharaoh’s Curse
- Cliffhanger Rooms – Bank Vault Heist
- Escape the Review
- Xscream Escapes: The Corpsewood Killer
- Xscream Escapes: Bedlam: Escape The Asylum
- Bust Out 360: Taken
- Time Race: Vault 17
- Trapped In Bury: The Ruby Factory
- Trapped In Bury: Interstellar
- Trapped In Bury: Time Machine
- Pressure Point: Murder on the Dancefloor
- Pressure Point: Broken
- Pressure Point: The Accused
- Escaping Rooms
- Geeks in Wales
- Escape Review
- Exit Games UK
- Escape Goats
- Immersophenia
- Completely Clueless
That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect or if you’re aware of other news, significant discounts or competitions, then let me know via email or in the comments below and I’ll include updates in the next edition.
Thanks for reading!