When I think escape room, I think about being locked in a room, trying to solve puzzles in order to be let out. Not an open square in Mile End. But that’s exactly where I spent my Saturday morning. An outdoor “escape room” if you will.
Inkwell Investigations* is East London’s mad science escape game and we had the pleasure of being summoned by Professor Inkwell on this occasion.
We must stop the time machine
Lord Inkwell’s time machine was on the verge of changing life as we know it. There was the likelihood that if we didn’t manage to turn it off the universe would shatter and the time-space continuum would suffer irreparable damage casting us all asunder. Or you know, something dramatic like that.
What set this game apart from the others I’d played, you know apart from it being outside, is that we were given characters to play. I was Abercrombie, the antiquitarian with a penchant for flowery language and a lover of books and chess.
It was fun to see how all the characters interlinked and how your own character’s background was filled in as more and more clues were unveiled. And my Lord, where there a lot of clues. As our group was quite big we split off into smaller sections to work on different things. But one of our lot stayed close to the time machine to read everything out. There were letters and maps and news cuttings to decipher and Bianca read every letter of every one – in fact, that would be my biggest bugbear with this game. There was so much to read.
But, it all got read. All the clues were deciphered. All the locks were opened and Lord Inkwell’s Time Machine was shut down with just a few minutes to spare.
That’s right. We saved the world again – I seem to be making a habit of this!
But that’s not all
Oh no. The game didn’t end there. Our team of intrepid investigators were coming to some rather grisly ends and it was up to us to determine which one of us was doing this dirty deed.
Sadly, we couldn’t come to a majority decision and the culprit wasn’t taken away by the time police. So they lived to commit another crime in another time!
Inkwell Investigations
All in all, I had a really good afternoon. It was nice to be outdoors trying to crack these codes instead of cooped up in a stuffy room. And being given characters to embody added an extra element of fun.
I was invited along by Love Pop Ups London and Inkwell Investigations for the purpose of reviewing the game. All thoughts and words are my own.
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