As you may have guessed we love escape rooms, and for purely research purposes, we’ve played loads of games. One of our favourite places to visit for puzzling is Edinburgh! It’s not too far away from Newcastle and has a fantastic range of escape rooms. In no particular order here are some of our favourites:
Padlox wasn’t an escape room we’d heard too much about before visiting. All we knew really was that it was slightly out of town in Leith and that we were doing an Olympic themed game called Going for Gold. The story for Going for Gold is really unique, the year is 2028 and the nation of Nova Patria has just competed in its first Olympics. They’ve done extremely well…suspiciously well in fact. Your job is to uncover the truth about their incredible results. You work your way through the world anti-doping lab, and see if you can uncover the truth behind the fledgeling nation’s remarkable performance.
We really enjoyed this game; there were some unique puzzles, a lovely system of keeping you on track and the story really is unique. The ending was really satisfying as all the pieces come together and open the final box. Although it’s out of the centre of Edinburgh, we’d definitely make the trip out to Padlox and we’re excited to see what game they come out with next!
Not exactly a surprise pick, LockedIn has been voted the #1 Escape Room in Europe and even the 13th best in the world. We believe all the rooms at LockedIn are well worth a visit! First of all Summerhall (the building the games are set in) is a wonderful building to visit on its own. It’s a huge location spanning a couple of postcodes, with plenty of history and some interesting exhibits to visit too.
But obviously the main reason you’re there are the exciting escape rooms. The attention to detail throughout the 3 rooms is incredible, and these games certainly have some of our favourite sets and props. Jackie and Heidi are great at putting in props that are only relevant to that game. For example in the Secret Lab (our favourite), you are locked in a (you guessed it) Secret Lab from the 1970s. Everything in the room is, therefore, fitting for a lab, and most importantly technology available in the 1970s. You won’t find a HD monitor in here, and this helps to make the game that little bit more immersive. The clue system, for example, is a dot-matrix printer which ticks away if you need any assistance.
There are loads of puzzles to solve in the secret lab so we’d definitely recommend taking a slightly larger team than normal, but it should keep you occupied for the full hour.
Another game, The Cutting Room has some of the best set design we’ve seen in an escape room, with really high-quality props and a couple of surprises along the way. Set in the same fictional world as the Secret Lab, the story is in-depth and engaging. We found some of the puzzles really tricky, and some which we probably made too difficult – but if you’ve got a few escape rooms under your belt you should be fine!
Their third escape room, the Distillery room is an exact replica of the Pickering’s Gin distillery that is also located in Summerhall. There are obviously a few extra padlocks thrown in, and sadly no actual gin but the authentic set makes for a really engaging escape room.
Overall, LockedIn’s attention to detail is second to none, and this leads to truly immersive and exciting escape rooms.
If you enjoy escape rooms then we’d certainly recommend a pilgrimage up to Edinburgh! We haven’t played all the escape rooms up there so let us know if there are any we should check out!
