Breakout Manchester Newton Street — Local services in Manchester

We consider ourselves fairly experienced escape room players — we’ve completed over 30 rooms in several countries and cities. After some early successes, we started focusing mainly on the most challenging ones (8/10–10/10 difficulty).

We arrived here with the same mindset and chose what was advertised as the venue’s hardest room, Underworld. The welcome was warm and professional, and our game master explained everything clearly before we started.

The atmosphere of the room, however, didn’t quite match the story’s theme — we expected a stronger Greek mythology vibe in the setting, but it felt more like we had stepped into a cave. The puzzles themselves did include references to the story, both visually and textually, so it’s really just the overall decor and ambiance that could use a bit of fine-tuning.

The challenges were generally well-designed and logical, and there were several creative ones that we really enjoyed. One small improvement could be adding subtitles to all in-room videos — the combination of language barriers and background music made it difficult at times to fully understand the dialogue.

When we first started playing escape rooms, we usually went as a group of four, but we’ve since realized that can often be too many people, so lately we’ve been doing two-player games. We were happy to find a non-linear room, which allowed both of us to explore and search independently before coming together to solve the puzzles. That said, this was the first time we actually felt that two players weren’t quite enough — there were simply too many tasks, and because the room was non-linear, we couldn’t manage to finish them all in time. Of course, that’s not the room’s fault — we were just too few for it. It might be worth considering extending the game duration to 75 minutes; in our case, an extra 15 minutes would have made a big difference.

Overall, we had a great time (our only frustration was really with our own slowness). The room was well constructed, we communicated easily with our game master, and after the game they kindly walked us through the remaining puzzles. As mentioned, slightly extending the time limit and enhancing the theme’s visual atmosphere could make the experience even better. We’d definitely be happy to try another one of their rooms...

This venue is my favorite of escape rooms. Many people seem to be able to escape, but I found it impossibly hard to even enter. Back in 2014, I found myself in a predicament which the staff were kind enough to sort out for me. I promised a stellar Yelp review, but I am so daft, it took me 7 short-years to do so. And I’m not even doing it on Yelp. I’ll do that next. Escape rooms hadn’t made it across the pond yet and I was just so excited to do one, I booked a room. Unaware of geography, I booked a room in Manchester. I sent the following message to Breakout Manchester shortly after booking what I was sure to be an epic time:

I just made a booking for three in the detective room for Thursday, 24th July at 16:00 but failed to realize prior to doing so where exactly Manchester is in relation to London, England. I saw that the directions indicated it was a fifteen minute walk from Oxford train station and confused that for Oxford tube stop. Geography was never my greatest subject in school and I'm a silly American who just now realizes that I couldn't possibly make it to Manchester for the booking I foolishly made with your organization. I am writing to plead with you for mercy in my request to have the booking refunded. The error was viciously mine, but the good will is yours for the taking if you would honor my request.

They refunded my ticket in exchange for my permission to publicly shame me, which they did in the friendliest way, and I definitely deserved it.

I think of them often and will one day journey to Manchester just to try to break out of a room I wasn’t even smart...

We were really looking forward to this. We have done many escape rooms across the UK and know what to expect. Every other escape room we’ve done we have been provided with a walkie talkie to have good communication with the staff in case we need help. This escape room didn’t provide that.

The staff member who explained the escape room story did a very poor job of it. She spoke far too fast, didn’t explain things properly and before she left us she said there were torches available. The torches didn’t work and we wasted time in the dark trying to get them to work before leaving the room and asking for help to discover the batteries were faulty.

The clues on the TV screen were meant to be every 10 minutes however some times we were left as much as 15 minutes in between clues, and with no walkie talkie it made communication really difficult.

Upon finishing the escape room, the staff member seemed indifferent towards us, and gave us the impression that she couldn’t be bothered. She quickly ushered us out of the room and said “you can find your own way out”.

We were left feeling very deflated, escape rooms cost a lot of money and for that I’d expect the staff to show more courtesy...