A Dalek Awakens – welcome to my first ever escape room!
It’s true, I am an escape room virgin… or was, I should say, as this particular cherry was popped this week with the brand new official Doctor Who escape room, ‘A Dalek Awakens’!
Don’t worry, there are going to be no spoilers here, you need to go explore these rooms for yourself and I won’t be messing anything up for you… besides, we lost so I’m probably not the best person to tell you how to do it anyway!
Following on from Escape Hunt’s first hugely popular official Doctor Who escape room, World’s Collide, A Dalek Awakens is the brand new offering from Escape Hunt which features the voices of Jodie Whitaker as The Doctor and Nicholas Briggs as the Dalek!
The Plot
The Doctor needs you: A rogue Dalek, a spaceship on the verge of destruction and an impossible choice…
Step on board a doomed spaceship, where a rogue Dalek has tapped into the power system, in an attempt to recharge its weapons. Should the Doctor’s most feared enemy be successful, it will exterminate all in its path.
You, the Doctor’s friends, must prevent this catastrophe. Shutting down the ship’s power core will ensure the Dalek cannot activate its weapons. However, the ship’s life support systems rely on the same energy source, meaning that shutting down the power would result in the death of all 10,000 passengers.
You have just 60 minutes to find a way out of this impossible situation. You must defeat the Dalek to allow the spaceship to continue safely on its journey. Take too long and your destination will be extermination!
The Experience
Offering a mixture of puzzles from logic puzzles, to exploration challenges, and a little physical challenge, the room offered an immersive opportunity to imagine what it would be like to be stuck on a doomed shift with one of the most evil creatures in the universe sat in the corner looking at you, and occasionally springing to life and making your life tougher!
I was impressed by the level of detail and build quality of the room, being an escape room virgin I have limited experience of said rooms, but I have been in a few and they have been noticeably poorer quality. There was a great mix of physical sets, interactive elements, and digital elements.
I was also impressed by the inclusion of the real voice actors and props, this helps to increase the level of immersion and also satisfies your inner geek if you’re a big Doctor Who fan like me!
You think an hour would be a long time, but when you have five core tasks to achieve, that time slips by at a fair pace. My team got stuck on one challenge and this unfortunately ate away at our time and led to the inevitable extermination!
Some puzzles are more complex than others, and while you can logic most out, some seemed to require a bit of luck too, but I guess that’s just like real life.
My only critique would be that the one puzzle we got stuck on seemed a bit too complex with too many variables for anyone to be able to solve in reasonable time, unless luck was on your side. I understand that a lot of escape rooms require you to progress through the process in turn, but as a lot of the team stood around watching two of us try to solve it, would it be an idea to enable the team to solve another task at the same time?
Verdict
I can’t say that I’m an escape room convert, but I did enjoy it a lot more than I thought I would. As a Whovian, the level of detail and the inclusion of the real voice actors certainly helped retain my interest.
If you love escape rooms, then come pay it a visit, you’ll love it. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, grab your sonic screwdriver, and maybe a fez, and come geek out with a dalek. Either way, it’s a fun way of passing an hour and you might just save the ship, defeat the Dalek and be a hero… or you might just be exterminated, like me!
‘A Dalek Awakens’ tickets are now on sale at the following Escape Hunt venues:
READING | BIRMINGHAM RESORTS WORLD
Be the first to hear when tickets are available at:
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