Tag Archives: the bristol maze

Exit game TV

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Television setFour quick stories about exit games on television, both past and future:

1) The Bristol Maze, of the City Mazes chain, was recently featured in a short but very positive piece on the genre that was part of the BBC’s Points West local news show.

2) As discussed, the US TV show Race to Escape will be coming to the UK version of the Discovery TV channel. Indeed, you may even have seen some trailers for it. There’s also acknowledgment of it, of a sort on the Discovery channel’s Press Releases page. This site liked the show a lot, though not everybody did, and certainly it’s rather more destructive within exit game rooms than would happen in the real world.

3) However, it’s more fun to look at what’s set to come in the future. This site is bullish about prospects for further exit game TV shows; the lack of references firmly fixing them at a point in time mean that they, like The Crystal Maze, could be repeated for literally decades to come and still entertain someone who hadn’t seen that particular episode before. The ratings for Race to Escape are mentioned in this press release; it’s written in jargon rather than English, but – running it through the translator – those ratings are apparently “boffo”.

Not sure if the success of Race to Escape has been noted as a good thing, but Intervirals pointed (on Facebook) that the US TV channel Pop, half-owned by the CBS Network, are set to feature a show by Zodiak USA, who have quite a track record, with the working title of Celebrity Escape Room. The Deadline web site quotes a press release like so: “Based on the hottest new craze in live-action gaming, CELEBRITY ESCAPE ROOM is a high-intensity, totally immersive pop culture challenge. Two celebrities and their friends compete by getting locked in identical rooms, and the only way out is to use their pop culture knowledge and work together to unlock the exit. With room themes ranging from zombie apocalypse to a totally tubular 80’s teen dream, viewers play along as the two celeb teams hilariously stumble through a series of clues, puzzles and red herrings until they unlock the key to their freedom. The first team to escape wins.”

4) As much as exit games are a global phenomenon, there’s no reason why TV exit games couldn’t be global likewise – and being quite visual, the formats might travel well. This site has discussed the outstanding The Genius broadcast on tvN in South Korea, which has won the Best Game/Quiz Program award in the Asian Television Awards and may have had more of an impact still; rival broadcaster JTBC has announced a show which looks like it might just be an exit game. (On the other hand, it might not; compare with Dero!, which inspired the US Syfy channel’s Exit, and is sadly just a dressed-up quiz.) ‘Code – the Secret Chamber’ is a psychological survival program that the casts have to evacuate from the locked down rooms with 4 different concepts by solving secret codes through mission games. Through their deductions, the program will induce the members to union, betrayal, corporation and competitions. ‘Code’ will air its first episode in January 2016.

Not long to wait to find out either way!

Now open in Bristol: the Bristol Maze

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The Bristol Maze logoThe Bristol Maze clearly has one of the best names in the land for an exit game. The location in an abandoned warehouse located below the iconic Clifton Suspension Bridge, about five minutes’ drive from the centre of the city. The site features two rooms, each of which offers a 60-minute game for a team of two to eight players. The site is open daily during the evenings (possibly earlier by arrangement?) and all day at weekends.

The Abandoned Office is a game in which “You and some friends discover an old abandoned office. After you enter, the door locks behind you and you find you are trapped with no obvious way to escape. You have 60 minutes to find way out.” In The Hostage Hostel, you don’t have much more luck; “After a long road trip you and friends are desperate to find somewhere to stay. You come across an old, creepy looking hostel and decide to enter. What a mistake that was – you’ve now been taken hostage! You now find yourself locked in, and have 60 minutes to escape.”

Pricing is £20 per player, but a Wowcher deal, surely not available for long though the precise expiry date does seem to be something of a movable feast, lets you have four players for £39, six for £49 or eight for £59 (or even book both rooms out and let up to sixteen play for £114). The four-player deal is a 51% discount as claimed, but the bigger deals offer even larger percentage discounts still – up to 64% or so!

The company behind it has an interesting background, being responsible for It’s A Knockout inflatable-game sports days and stag and hen party entertainment. There are a few corporate entertainment / team-building companies who have taken that route into the exit game market, as (slightly) distinct from people who have set up exit games and later marketed it as corporate team-building entertainment. This site has been looking for an excuse to post this link about KDM Events’ exit-game-derived contest for a while; in the schools’ market, the Robinwood activity centres’ Dungeon of Dooooooooooooooooooom looks like it has similarities as well. It may be the case that any corporate entertainment company worth its salt has its own sort-of-entry into the market by now!

November 2015 Dealwatch: coupons and discounts to play exit games for less

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"Special Price" stickerDealwatch is an occasional feature which, as the name suggests, looks out for special offers that exit games are promoting. (Very occasional; the last time it happened was January.) Some ground rules apply:

  • Do check voucher companies’ terms, conditions and guarantees and this site takes no responsibility for deals that fall through for whatever reason, which sadly has happened at least once and probably twice;
  • Many of these deals only permit a limited number of vouchers to be purchased and then the deal will expire. It’s quite possible that deals may have expired between being published below and your attempt to use them;
  • This non-commercial site does not attract any commission for promoting these deals, or for you using them;
  • These deals are not exclusive in any manner.
  • Ken found about half of these and many thanks to him, as ever, for sharing them.

Groupon seems to be the de facto brand leader, or at least the site that more exit games use than any others. There’s no telling when these might expire, but currently it has social buying deals for Code to Exit of Altrincham, ESCAP3D of Belfast, Escape Game Brighton, Hidden Rooms London, Mission Escape of Exeter and Zombie in a Room of Chesterfield. It’s far from the only game in town, though, no pun intended; Dealmonster (to which this site says “monster, monster”) has a deal for Clue HQ in Blackpool with about a week left on the clock. That said, if you want to play Clue HQ in Brentwood, there’s a discount code of uncertain lifespan that was shared on its Facebook group.

Sometimes you can find the existence of a site that you didn’t know even existed when you spot a deal for it. The rather wonderfully-named The Bristol Maze, more of which soon, has a deal on Wowcher that expires when Tuesday turns into Wednesday; Lock Down Zone of Rotherham, more of which even sooner, has posted a half-off code, LDZ50Off, that applies in November.

Last, but far from least, EVAC of Glasgow has a LivingSocial deal with two or three days left to go on it. This has been saved for last because EVAC’s manager Graeme writes with a sad tale but sees the funny side:

“Evac was full on Saturday ((7th November)), but when I turned up, it had been broken into and trashed which was sad. Made it back open today ((Monday 9th November)) though after extensive work yesterday.

They didn’t nick much however I wish I was there when the thieves opened up their lockboxes to find puzzles :)!

Quite upset they never tried to solve the puzzles and just crowbarred open every lock… ah well.“