Various UK locations

 

In just 60 minutes the Cybermen will attack Earth, and only you and your team can stop them. Take too long & the human race will be upgraded!

Live, interactive Doctor Who adventures are nothing new, with both The Doctor Who Experience and The Crash of the Elysium being recent examples where audiences directly join in with stories set in the Who-niverse, but this is the first time where you’re fully in the driving seat, battling the Cybermen.

If you’ve never taken part in an escape room before, it’s worth providing some context. You and some fellow players are dropped into a ‘sealed’ environment (it’s not actually locked) and given a set time to crack the codes, solve the riddles and ultimately release the final door to freedom. Far from being a scenario from a Saw film (or the currently-showing Escape Room movie) the focus is on fun, encouraging your team to exercise lateral thinking to crack the conundra.

Clearly I won’t reveal any of the puzzles, or how to resolve them, but it’s ok to share the set-up. Billionaire Alastair Montague has been experimenting with time travel and has ripped a tear in space and time. The Cybermen have detected the anomaly and your team has an hour to patch things up before the silver giants break through and invade Earth.

So, how did we do? Unfortunately, we didn’t complete the task in time, and a further five to ten minutes would have done it. There were only three of us in the group, and I’d recommend you have at least four, preferably the full six. This is because the latter stages of the game require you to pair up and work on certain aspects independently of the others. It also didn’t help that one of the props got stuck (we were advised to give it a clonk on floor – not ideal) and another task suffered some from a mechanism that was shonky to say the least.

Verdict: There’s plenty of references to keep the fans happy, though not to the point that you need an aficionado’s knowledge to succeed. Definitely go with as big a ‘fam’ as possible to give yourselves a fighting chance, and remember to think outside of the (blue) box. We went on the opening weekend and it’ll be interesting to see if the adventure is finessed as more teams take part. Sadly, it’s too late for us, as we’re just Yvonne Hartmans and Danny Pinks, assimilated into the collective… 7/10

Nick Joy

 

 

You can book tickets at https://escapehunt.com/doctorwho/