Company:
City Mazes

Location:
2 Clanage Road, Bower Ashton, Bristol BS3 2JX

Synopsis:
You and some friends discover an old abandoned office. After you enter, the door locks behind you and you find you are trapped with no obvious way to escape. You have 60 minutes to find a way out.

Date we visited:
27 January 2018

Price at time of visit:
£25 pp

Goats attended:
Daiman and Jenny

Did we escape?
Yes, with two minutes left and four clues taken.

Value for money

5/10For £25 you get a very basic room in theming and design. Although I genuinely enjoyed the game, it just didn’t feel comparable to other games of the same price bracket.

 Daiman

5/10At £25pp I felt the price was a little high. The building was a shack in the middle of a green. The rooms were cold as well. We played as a two. I feel more than 4 would be too much

Jenny

Theming

4/10Not very impressive at all. It was billed as being an office due for demolition and, in that sense, it worked. But hazard tape, visible MDF walls everywhere and a lack of flooring (this game took place in what’s best described as a massive shed) just demonstrated a lack of effort.

 Daiman

3/10Whilst the theme was to be an abandoned office, I was not entirely sure what the point of the game was. I appreciated I was in my Gramps’ old office, but I wasn’t sure why? The room was dirty, but not sure if this was bad design or an attempt to look derelict.

Jenny

Uniqueness

3/10There was nothing unique about this game at all. It was an extremely rudimentary experience in an uninspiring location.

 Daiman

3/10I felt like this room lacked design and substance. There was nothing unique to it, just a very sparse room. I did enjoy the game but it was nothing special.

Jenny

Puzzles

3/10There wasn’t anything exciting about these puzzles, there was also a severe lack of them. The design was also pretty bad. One puzzle we managed to solve before we had all the required pieces (and we didn’t brute force it either) and another element where our escape room etiquette got the better of us.

 Daiman

5/10As this room has a 20% success rate, we were nervous with two that it would be tough. We used 4 clues when we were stuck, which we were annoyed about as it was due to our politeness of respecting furniture and a lack of hunting. Whilst the puzzles were tough, we felt let down that there were hardly any in the room. We also found the clue system should have been a bit more cryptic.

Jenny

The good

I know the scores don’t really reflect it but the game was actually fun. The linear aspect was very useful to us considering we were playing with a reduced team.

 Daiman

I liked one particular puzzle which I solved through some clever thinking.

Jenny

The bad

Their clues were pretty awful, basically just handing us the answer. I left there feeling like I hadn’t achieved much as a result.

 Daiman

I felt the hosts were fairly weak, and showed no real passion for the game. The clue system also let it down.

Jenny

Overall scores