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More good news

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good newsI’ve had some very bad news. It’s not relevant what it is, for those of you lucky enough not to know it, and it doesn’t affect my ability to continue keeping this going. Instead, time to share some good news.

  • Congratulations to Clue HQ Sunderland for opening their first game! The planned opening was discussed two months ago yesterday and has – very unusually – come ahead of schedule. Bunker 38 is now open, with The Vault set to follow soon. Tyneside has proved a popular location – more news to come on this soon – so hopefully Wearside works just as well. All the very warmest of wishes to them!
  • Also the very warmest of wishes to a couple whose proposal took place at Cryptic Escape of Norwich. This might be the seventh UK couple to propose at an exit game of which this site is aware; let’s hope they all remain locked tightly – no, unbreakably, together.
  • The Escape Room have been welcoming the stars: both stars on two wheels at their Manchester location and stars of the screen at their Preston branch. Their third location, planned for Birmingham, is “close to announcing a launch date“; who knows what stars they might be able to attract there?
  • Lastly, and further afield, this site very much enjoyed reading about the latest SCRAP Real Escape Game event in Tokyo, this one “a puzzle-solving game played while walking through the streets of Tokyo. To find your next destination, you will need to solve the mysteries you find along the way.” In other words, a self-paced puzzle hunt, running at your convenience until December 27th. Cutely, there’s a tie-up with the Tokyo Metro, and the game kit comes with a one-day travel pass to get you from location to location. “English and Traditional Chinese versions are available for this game so non-Japanese speakers who can understand English or Traditional Chinese are welcome to play the game as well!” To give this claim a try, Escape Room Directory’s Dan Egnor posted his review to Google Plus and was rather impressed. Certainly it’s among the most mainstream puzzle hunts yet!

Coming soon to Norwich: Cryptic Escape

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Cryptic Escape logoEast Anglia’s first stationary exit game arrives imminently; Cryptic Escape, of Norwich, is now open for bookings from tomorrow, Friday 10th July. This site has been in touch with the man behind the new game for some time and really looking forward to its launch. The location is tremendous: go to Norwich Cathedral’s main entrance, turn around and you’ll see a white building with an external wooden frame, thought to be almost half a millennium old. (Jailbreak! at Oxford Castle sputters at the newcomer.) Augustine Steward House, where a Tudor merchant who was the city’s mayor three times once lived, hosts Cryptic Escape, along with a number of other businesses.

The site is launching with one game, though two more are promised to be added soon. The first game is a very popular Mazebase classic, The Laboratory of Dr. Lev Pasted; it’s also available at Puzzlair in Bristol, but that’s a good couple of hundred miles away. This is the secret hideout and laboratory of the mysterious Romanian geneticist and biologist Dr. Lev Pasted. In his late years he focused his experiments on some kind of blood elixir. The formula is gone, so has the doctor. Some say, that the secret blood serum is still inside the lab hidden somewhere. It’s a 60-minute game for teams of two to five.

In the near future, the site will shortly add The Treasure of Green Beard, in which The players have 60 minutes to find the hidden treasures of the famous pirate Captain Green Beard. The treasure is well hidden in his old hideaway, where he lived while he wasn’t sailing and robbing around the Caribbean seas. A little further down the line, you may be able to get to know The Steampunk Explorer, the tale of The famous explorer Thelonius Winter, who travelled from Victorian time, into the future to retrieve a mystical and powerful relic, then returned back to the past. More news when they become available.

The site charges £40 for a team of two and £10 for each extra player, so teams of five are charged just £70. The site’s promotional video is rather fun, too!