Escape Time Burton — Attraction in East Staffordshire

I tried the X-Tinction escape room, but, regrettably, me and the family did not enjoy the experience.

But let me start with positives and the reason for the second star in my rating. The venue was really nice, and we managed to arrange the game at the very last moment. The room had a cool theme with a clear nod to a certain popular film franchise about dinosaurs roaming on a remote island :) There was a good reason why we had only one hour to complete the mission. And when we stepped inside, it was all very immersive with lots of great props. So we got off to a good start, right? Well, good impressions didn't last for very long.

The room was very dark, which was ok and atmospheric to begin with, but even after we activated extra lights it was still very dim. To be fair, there were quite a few flashlights hidden around, but having to do almost everything with a flashlight in hand was not that enjoyable in the long run. Not only was it dark, but it was also quite loud in some areas, to the point that we were really struggling to understand hints from the game master (given over a walkie-talkie). If it was only me and my wife then you could blame it on English being our second language, but our teenage daughter, who is a native speaker, wasn't faring much better. This was super frustrating.

But ultimately it's about solving puzzles and to give credit, there were puzzles galore in the X-Tinction room. The only problem is that solving those puzzles wasn't fun for us. The room fell victim to overabundance. There was almost no flow to the room. Mainly lots and lots of padlocks being on the display at the same time that were not connected in any way with their clue. So if you get what you think might be a valid combination, you have to hustle around the room to find if it opens any of the suitable padlocks. To make it even more random, there are many puzzles with partial clues scattered and hidden behind padlocks, often without anything to tell you when you get to a complete set. For instance, we individually collected three cards of a certain type. Do those three cards hide a combination for opening one of the three digit locks, or do we need another one (or two) because they are clues for four (or five) digit combination locks (and there are plenty of locks)? There were a few such partial clue sets to complete in parallel, which also came mixed with lots and lots of (very good, mind you) props that might have been just props, or possibly elements of another puzzle to be used later.

The room wasn't padlocks only. There were a few electronic/mechanical puzzles. Which normally adds the extra fun factor, but here some were not working properly or designed very well: a back lit button not lighting up when pressed, an electronic lock opening something without any cue when solved, a key that was supposed to be released electronically that we simply found hanging around. At one point we got out of the blue a lock combination from the game master over the radio. After the game we asked where that was supposed to come from, and apparently that was from an electronic element that "sometimes works, sometimes doesn't". Indeed, when we tried interacting with that element it didn't seem to do much. There is a twist to that part, but I will come to that.

As all experiences go, this one was a subjective one, for sure. What didn't work for us might be great for others. Nevertheless, among the 12+ rooms that we had tried in the past, this one was our least favourite by far, and the only one that I thoroughly didn't enjoy. Also, not the cheapest one. To cement the bad impression I got a phone call from the branch manager afterwards. It was one of those "sorry, not sorry" spiels, to make me feel bad for not enjoying the experience. This includes me saying that, amongst others, there were elements that didn't work and which was admitted by the game master. But apparently we owe it only to our incompetence for failing to operate it correctly and the game master shouldn't have said what she said because everything was...

We played in Burton. I can see how the game has so many good reviews, but on the day for us it didn't feel like a well polished experience and so was overall disappointing. From the outset, things didn't run smoothly and this left us feeling deflated when we left. Our game master couldn't get the introductory video (telling the story for the room and setting the scene) to work. She called for someone to help, who also couldn't get it to play and went to call for someone else, presumably more senior. The message relayed back was for the game master to explain the room to us. This was disappointing as it felt like the quality of our experience wasn't that important. The game master's explanation was very basic and not overly inspiring- this may be because staff rely on the videos working, but it was not a good start to the experience. The room looked good, and was well scened. However, little things again didn't run smoothly. The room was very dark, which I appreciate many escape rooms are, but the lamp provided was inadequate and slowed us down significantly. We played as a two, and while my partner was using the lamp I could achieve very little because it was nearly impossible to see anything, which was frustrating (we had been told not to use torches on our phones). At one stage, we were given a clue about part of the puzzle to unlock something else. We completed this, but there was no signal or confirmation that anything had opened and so we stood around waiting and asking whether we had completed this correctly. We asked several times and had no response from the game master, so ended up redoing the activity thinking we had made a mistake. This again slowed us down. At one point the game master had to come in to the room to give us a clue because the microphone had stopped working. We had a problem locating some final objects for part of the game. We spent a long time looking for these and going back to places we had already checked. For a while we stood waiting while we heard staff talking outside of the room, presumably about this issue. The game master suggested checking another area again (which leads to another room), which we did and the object was there. My partner was really confused about this, because he was absolutely convinced that he had emptied this space of objects and that it was empty when he left it. Game master also said that there was only one of these objects in this area, and my partner felt sure he'd picked one up when clearing the area. We cannot say for certain if this is the case, but it really threw us because he felt sure he'd collected everything, including just one of the objects in question. During the game something opened- we spent time looking for something inside but couldn't find anything. At the end of the game the game master checked it herself and told us that there should have been a clue in there, but that it wasn't in there. We unfortunately left feeling disappointed and let down by our experience, as too many things weren't quite right, especially when...

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY AND TIME ON THIS TERRIBLE EXCUSE FOR AN ESCAPE ROOM.

On arriving for the Prison X escape room I was initially very impressed. The room(s) looked great. We began to a great start, nice puzzles, very prison escape cliché type, loved it. We had set a great pace and were impressed by the escape room so far. A small hiccup in the overall setup of the room. Which resulted in a member of staff pretending to be a prison guard shouting at us all 'face the wall!' (so we didn't see what he corrected), basically they had forgotten to put a very helpful bucket in the room. Quite funny to be honest.

We got into the second room and then..... MORSE CODE!!!!!???? Morse code via listening to a payphone. (Having done a few escape rooms now involvement of morse code in any way ruins the experience.) It plays too fast and with the background music playing it is extremely difficult to hear the morse code beeps. All of our 4 team members tried to listen, all of us got different answers. This completely broke our will (and to be honest we got bored) After about 8 attempts the phone suddenly stopped working (great!) This completely felt like an unimaginative low blow. We asked the staff to give us the code as there were technical issues involved but he wouldn't give us it for 10 minutes! What annoys me most about morse code puzzles in escape rooms is that they are not a test of your ability to solve puzzles, they are only testing your ability to differentiate between a dash and a dot whilst having distracting background music playing(borrrrring!) 😴 💤

Flag puzzle was mediocre. However very ambiguous answers.

The roman numerals puzzle made no sense whatsoever. The initial instinct is to add together any roman numerals you receive in an escape room, right? Wrong! They came up with some loosely fitting logic for it. (basically you need a prior knowledge of how roman numerals work when written together in one line) This puzzle was for a 'bonus puzzle' at the end. No thanks.

The electronic safe only has 3 attempts for unlocking or else it will actually lock itself for the rest of the game and you won't be able to finish the escape room (well designed escape rooms have a time bar on their safes i.e. If you have 3 wrong attempts you have to wait for 5 minutes until you can try again) . We used our 3 chances with about 10 minutes to spare. As we knew we could no longer continue, we just gave up and all sat down and had a chat. This is where control measures come into play in escape rooms. The escape room must have control measures in place to ensure that those trying to escape can never be left bored or accidentally snooker themselves out of the game.

Sorry escape time, more work needed here. Not...