Company:
Breakin’ Escape Rooms

Location:
89 Holloway Road, London, N7 8LT

Synopsis:
21 October 1891, London. Newspapers announce the death of one of the greatest detectives that has ever lived. Sherlock was working for the past months on the most important case in his career. He had become isolated and lost touch with the outside world. He was last seen on a dark alley in Westminster. The next day, a body was brought in to the King’s Hill Hospital morgue matching his description. It is your duty now, as Sherlock’s faithful assistant, to go into his office and unravel the mystery surrounding his death by solving his last case. But be careful, the one behind Sherlock’s murder may now be after you…

Date we visited:
30 August 2017

Price at time of visit:
From £16pp off-peak and £25pp peak

Goats attended:
Daiman, Jenny, Paul, Bharath

Did we escape?
Yes, with 26 minutes to spare and no clues (their 2nd best time ever!)

Value for money

4/10Considering the price of other games, this is a poor, vanilla experience for the cash put down.

 Daiman

6/10Like all the other Breakin’ games we paid £27 pp. The games are fun but I find the theming, puzzles and experience is always standard.

Jenny

4/10At £27 each, this is a little pricey for what you get. This is supposed to be Breakin’s hardest room, but we escaped with 26 minutes to spare (by far a record for us) which meant the money we spent didn’t last long!

Paul

4/10Not value for my money in my opinion. I have seen similar themes in better rooms.

 Bharath

Theming

5/10It’s a study. I guess it looked pretty decent but as far as spaces go, it was uninteresting and, again, a single area experience. If you picture in your mind what you expect Sherlock’s study to look like, you won’t be far off the map.

 Daiman

5/10As this game is based on Sherlock I suppose there is not much you can do on the theme. This was literally a living room belonging to Sherlock, whilst you felt like you were in his living quarters there was nothing special.

Jenny

5/10Nothing special here. Looks the part but doesn’t excite.

Paul

4/10It was a bog standard study, nothing out of the ordinary. It’s a theme that has been recycled over and over again, so don’t expect anything amazing.

 Bharath

Uniqueness

2/10Nothing unique about this at all really. An unexciting environment paired with the typical Breakin’ mix of puzzles. I’ve realised that all of their games are pretty much identical in puzzle mix and flow, just with each room being in a different ‘skin’.

 Daiman

4/10As this was essentially an office, there was nothing unique to this room. The puzzles were normal and nothing really different occurred in this experience.

Jenny

5/10Again, nothing special here either. Some good logic games but nothing that is very memorable.

Paul

4/10There was nothing in this room that caught my eye. I was expecting a big finale but nothing ever came.

 Bharath

Puzzles

3/10Depending on how many other games you’ve played at Breakin’, you may/may not find this harsh but it’s got everything you expect from Breakin’, right down to the requisite physical puzzle. At this point, I’m just getting bored of it.

 Daiman

5/10Having read that this was their hardest room, we were shocked to escape in just over 30 mins. The puzzles were fairly simple and didn’t involve any skill, there was some logic but overall pretty standard. There was however so many puzzles in this room that everyone had something to do.

Jenny

5/10The puzzles here are mostly logic based and are pretty good. We found them quite easy to solve, but they may have just played to our strengths. I’ve docked a point or two because of their easiness.

Paul

5/10All the puzzles in this escape room were logic based apart from 1 which was a skill game. As you can see from our time we didn’t find them that difficult, but for inexperienced players it could be a different story.

 Bharath

The good

There was a lot to do – you would probably struggle playing this with less than four people as the game seemed like it boasted the highest puzzle count of their games that we played.

 Daiman

I liked the fact that there was enough to do in this room that all four members were occupied.

Jenny

If you like logic games, you will enjoy this.

Paul

The level of difficulty did vary in this game.

 Bharath

The bad

I managed to break the physical game and though everyone else in our team blamed me (the Breakin’ guys were super cool about it) for being haphazard, the honest, genuine truth is that I simply used the thing the way in which it was supposed to be used. If anything, as a group, we tend to play very cautiously so for us to break something, it points to the flimsiness of the prop…

 Daiman

I always find games set in an office pretty boring as they are all the same. Perhaps if we left the room at some point this could have improved the experience.

Jenny

One of the skill games broke whilst we were trying to complete it and we had to wait for them to come in and retrieve the key that we could no longer get, which ruined the flow slightly.

Paul

Needed more fun skill game elements.

 Bharath

Overall scores