Sherlock: Escape Rooms — Attraction in London

I've played the original Sherlock Holmes escape room experience which was much better.

Whoever decided to redesign the experience to be AI themed with no knowledge of how AI works needs a few lessons.

They also cocked up one of the early puzzles and the game designers need to actually look at games and understand the word acronym.

In short, most of the puzzles are reaching or not actually deduction.

I post this for anyone who might need this advice as it was clearly mislabelled.

The puzzle which refers to the acronym of 'INITIAL' is actually not referring to an acronym of initial but actually trying to say the FIRST acronym you heard which was Old. This is Not part of the actual experience but something you heard during the onboarding. There will be zero reference to this but it's important to note the game starts FROM THIS POINT, not when you enter the room. Any game designer knows if you phrase anything inside of "quotes" usually is highlighting that thing as the subject of the puzzle directly.

Another issue was the instructions to not use phones in the experience but also the rooms are really dark and a number of the puzzles need a flashlight to see them... You are not given a flashlight which causes a contradiction and confusion of whether or not you can use your phone as a flashlight or not. (Maybe the lighting wasn't good enough for us or we have bad eyesight?)

All and all.

Room 1 is okay. Baring the first puzzle issue. Room 2 is a fun obstacle course but the second puzzle is lacking in deduction and just linking text to oddities in an image. Room 3 requires a flashlight and obfuscates key components in dark places. Even behind the TVs. ( Literally I wouldn't look behind the TVs in any escape room without instruction) If I were the game designer I would include directing the user to the button locations as part of the prior puzzles and then initiating the talk fast and nobody explodes segment.

Finally the photos were quite expensive and unfocused. We thought we would receive print outs but they were just digital photos off what I assume a camera that hadn't been setup correctly.

All an all. The original experience that I attended several years ago was leagues better than this. You had to observe body features, fish out keys using tools, solve some hidden messages etc. It's a bit unfortunate how downhill the experience has become. I would never pay full price for...

So I've done many an escape room. Though not one for a couple of years. My first was Time Run which hooked me on, their second room was even better, so when I heard the same team were staging a Sherlock game I was super excited. One pandemic later I finally got to it. I have to say I was also slowed a little by it being I think the most expensive escape room I've come across.

The game itself is great, varied puzzles, logical structure, very good fun. Production quality is high as expected from Time Run. The problem is the game isn't any better than other good games, I've definitely done better….for cheaper. The Sherlock tie in is just an excuse to squeeze money out of you I feel, instead of actually adding to the experience.

After arriving on time you will be forced to wait (and hopefully spend) in their bar for 15 minutes. Just a random waste of time meant to squeeze pounds out of you. Next up you get debriefed and photographed in 221B. The photos you can buy at the end for an extortionate sum, instead of the fun team photos you get sent from other escape rooms as part of the deal.

The experience slot is about 90minutes, the game itself is an hour. You need about 5 minutes of briefing but the other 25 minutes is just them trying to squeeze more than they've already taken by being the most expensive escape room. Once the game starts the Sherlock tie in is kind of plastered on. It's not actually adding to the game.

Another big disappointment was the lack of any debrief. At the end of other games every other game will break down good points and explain bits you struggled on etc. Here we got nothing, not even a "well done, you did it". Instead we were met with a disgruntled employee given the obviously hopeless task of selling us our photos for £12. I guess in most other games you meet the small business owner or game designer or some one who actually cares about the game. I noticed a little nod to the original time run in one of the rooms and mentioned it but our exit doorman just wasn't there to talk about escape rooms and waved me off.

Time Run is no longer a brand of quality escape rooms, it now stands for tourist trap leaching looking to squeeze you at more turns...

Huge budget, no thought. If you love escape rooms or even just genuinely clever design, stay away -the price is NOT WORTH IT. They had no idea how to run an escape room and didn't think to include the basic rules ie. Can we mess with stuff on the walls, two finger rule, etc - when staff was asked about these things they had no clue to the point where it was obvious they had never been in an escape room in their life. Props were used multiple times in unintuitive ways. The final room's equipment for one of the puzzles was horrible to try and figure out, nothing to do with the puzzle, mind you, just poorly designed pieces. Aside from character names there were no references to the show once inside the room. The clue system is horrible - the operators are often late on hints to the point where they are of no use and players cannot simply request a clue when they feel it is needed at all. Rooms are locked as soon as you go through them, resulting in players not being able to access stuff like their phones that they left in one room whilst they are in the next, and it is blindingly obvious that the room is being reset as you go through it to save time, which ruins the immersion. After running out of time due to having to mess with bad, difficult to use equipment for around five minutes (with no help provided!) and one of our players ending up in tears, the operators did not apologize or sympathize at all. It is typically good escape room etiquette to show losers the rest of the puzzles, and this was not done at all. (I have been in over thirty, not once have I lost and not been shown how the game would have gone.) Edit: While the reply is appreciated, I must restate with full confidence that were the employees trained on the issues that the replier believed non-existent, I would not have left this review. Please do better instead of trying to convince me and others that my...