It’s similar to a real escape room in terms of puzzles, but the experience won’t feel the same as you won’t be going at break-neck pace and you won’t be trapped in the house. Rest assured that you’ll be solving puzzles in order to gain a prize, not to earn your freedom to leave!
Also, it’s different from an escape room in that you don’t need to take the house to pieces. The clues will either be easy to find or signposted, so while you should feel free to look in drawers etc, you won’t need to pull everything off the walls and disembowel the furniture.
Additionally, there are no cameras in the house, and no gamemaster keeping track of your progress.
That’s a very good question and it depends whether you prefer to rush through the clues like a herd of sleuthing wildebeest or savour the experience like a fine wine. As a general guide, we reckon that the puzzles might take you a day to a day and a half - this would be to find the main prize plus two bonus prizes, and would include time for the treasure hunt around Tewkesbury. If this sounds a bit much to you, you could just aim for the main prize, which might take about three times as long as a ‘standard’ escape room.
So basically you can choose how much puzzle-solving to do depending on how you feel at the time. All in all, the experience should amuse you for a fair bit of your weekend, but there’ll still be time for you to do your own stuff and go on local adventures.
Only if you are too proud to ask for help for three days and three cold nights. We’ll tell you the code if you need, but hopefully you won’t require help as this puzzle is pretty straightforward. Plus you can always check your answer with us in advance if you don’t fancy the added spice of finding out whether you can get in the door after a long journey.
There are hints and clues built in to the game, so you don’t have to worry about being stuck for hours if you can’t solve one puzzle. It’s up to you as a group whether you use any hints. We are confident that you will all agree with each other on this question.
In extremis, if something goes wrong and a hint/clue isn’t enough, you can contact us during the weekend. We might not be able to answer in real-time but we will get back to you.
Tewkesbury is, in our biased opinion, the best little town with an Abbey and a flooding problem in the whole of the South West. It’s really lovely to wander around and it’s full of history and tea shops.
If there are six of you, it is possible to set up an extra mattress in the room with the single bed. However, you might trip over each other. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss this.
Hats will be provided.