How to survive your first Escape Room

Escape rooms seem to be popping up all over the country and Escape Hunt is the latest addition to The Light in Leeds. If you haven’t been to an Escape Room before, the concept is that you and your team get locked in a themed room which is filled with puzzles and codes which you have to solve in order to escape within a time limit.

At the moment, it contains two World War Two themed rooms and I was invited down with some of my friends to try it out during their press launch. Having never been to an escape room before, I was slightly concerned that my friends from work were going to see the controlling psychopath side to my personality that I usually don’t bring out (LOL) but thankfully we managed to stay calm and escape.

We absolutely loved the experience we had with our games master, Noel. He talked us through how we’d get into the room and have to work the clues out from there and how he’d be watching us the whole time and listening to our conversations so he could give us a nudge in the right direction if necessary – which turned out to be fairly frequently!

Though I can’t give away the clues as it would ruin the game, the idea is to break through a series of codes and puzzles in order to find and destroy a bomb which was planted by a spy. When we first walked in, I did just think to myself ‘but what the hell do we do first’ as we weren’t given any prior instructions but after searching the room, it became clearer and we moved from clue to clue and eventually got out with two minutes to spare.

At Escape Hunt in Leeds, as there are two rooms, there is an opportunity to go against each other in teams, which we had originally planned to do, but we were advised to go in as a six. After doing the Escape Room, it became quickly apparent that we definitely needed everyone’s different skill sets and we’d have struggled in a team of three.

As it was my first Escape Room experience, I wanted to share some of my tips to getting out in under an hour.

1. Go with colleagues. I found that because I went with friends from work, we already know how to work together and to listen, plus you can’t lose your shit entirely in front of your boss. I think for a first time escape room experience where you don’t know what your doing, this makes it a whole lot easier as it could definitely break up a friendship.

2. Listen to what people are saying. Even if you think it’s wrong, let everyone’s voice be heard, simply because it stops people getting pissed off and wound up.

3. Work together but also play to your strengths. When solving the first few clues, we worked together and tried to be methodical but after that, we ended up splitting up a bit – making it very hard for Noel who was trying to keep track of how we were doing from the outside!

4. Wear a watch. I didn’t do this but as we couldn’t take our phones in with us, it meant we had no concept of time whilst we were in there and towards the end, that meant that we started to panic that we were running out of time.

5. Check everything and then check it again. It’s really easy to miss clues because you haven’t searched enough – but at the same time, if it’s bolted down, take that as meaning you shouldn’t be trying to move it!

I absolutely loved my Escape Hunt experience and would 100% recommend doing it as a team building activity. It is £25 per person and before we went, we thought it was quite pricey, but for the amount of fun we had, I’d say it’s worth it for an occasion or event.

Thank you to Escape Hunt for inviting us down, to our games master Noel who made it a fantastic experience and to Maz, Hannah, Hollie, Luke and Juan for coming with me.