Company:
Escapologic

Location:
21-23 Castle Gate, Nottingham, NG1 7AQ

Synopsis:
13utcher is the fifth locked room puzzle created by our resident mad genius, and it’s one of the most impressively-realised yet! No expense has been spared to recreate the atmosphere of the butcher’s lair in all its gory details. If you had to make a comparison with the movies, it’d be the set of Saw or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The original, of course, not the dodgy 2003 remake…

Date we visited:
15 October 2017

Price at time of visit:
£23pp

Goats attended:
Daiman, Jenny, Bharath

Did we escape?
No

Value for money

9/10Wow, for £23 we got to live out an actual horror movie! Fantastic. But, word of warning, your mileage will vary depending on how you deal with ‘scary’ things as this is definitely on the panic-inducing end of the spectrum!

 Daiman

9/10This escape experience warns you on the website of the low success rate. So be warned before you enter, the low success rate is due to people quitting from fear rather than not succeeding the game. This is a great experience but not for the fainthearted!

Jenny

8/10This room is all about the scare factor. If scary escape rooms are not your thing then it’s not for you, otherwise it’s definitely worth doing.

 Bharath

Theming

9/10Okay, it looks derelict and pretty trashed but that’s the point! What set this game apart for me was that it didn’t feel ‘dressed’ at all. It felt real. As though you had just stepped into a killer’s lair. It fills you with dread before the butcher even makes his appearance!

 Daiman

9/10The theming for this room was excellent, you certainly felt like you were in a butchers lair. From the meat grinder to the tools and smells, by far one of the scariest, best themed rooms I’ve been in!

Jenny

8/10Escapologic have done well on the theming on this one. You can tell a lot of thought has been put into it. It definitely had a butcher’s lair grotty feel, that added to that scare factor. The darkness is used effectively in this room.

 Bharath

Uniqueness

8/10You’re in a killer’s hideaway trying to escape – stop me if you’ve heard that one before! Difference is that, this time, he’s in there with you! I don’t want to spoil his presence in the game but it isn’t gimmicky like the zombie-in-a-room games where the chain gets longer every five minutes. Again, all I will say is this is like being in a horror movie and unlike other horror-themed rooms – you can believe that you could end up dying in this place!

 Daiman

9/10Whilst the game itself was not unique, the fear factor and experience you get from the butcher visits was sublime. I’ve never found myself hiding in a toilet for another game!

Jenny

8/10The butcher himself is what made this room unique. The fact that as the time grew shorter, he was getting closer. Some of my team were even worried about entering certain rooms in case the butcher was lurking around the corner. We were definitely aware of his presence. The noises the butcher made added to this experience.

 Bharath

Puzzles

5/10This was definitely the weak point of the game. We got stuck at not one but two points in the game when we encountered things that, to us, came close to breaking escape room etiquette. Maybe we are on the more cautious side of the fence but one part required a decent amount of force from us and another, though somewhat visually clued, didn’t feel right in the sense that it was interacting with something that we wouldn’t normally expect to. This, crucially, cost us time and the game in the end. And one of the puzzles seemed quite vague to us, even when explained afterwards. I did appreciate though how, mostly, everything you needed to do was on-theme.

 Daiman

5/10The puzzles themselves let this room down as there was only one complex one, which you solved by finding clues etc. The puzzle was really tricky and with the added fear factor of the butcher I struggled to focus.

Jenny

6/10The puzzles were OK in this room, but it’s not what makes this room special. Having the butcher there did keep you on edge which made it harder to solve the puzzles.

 Bharath

The good

It’s an amazing theatrical experience, you’ll definitely forget that you’re playing an escape game. Your drive to escape won’t come from a competitive need to beat the challenges but to survive!

 Daiman

I absolutely loved how terrifying this experience was! Great theming and the host was fantastic!

Jenny

I loved how I had a bit of interaction with the butcher near the end as well as the scare factor he gave.

 Bharath

The bad

As mentioned earlier, there were a few elements present that we felt went against everything that we’ve learned playing through escape rooms. Especially because in this case, it cost us time that might’ve made the difference between escaping or not.

 Daiman

I struggled with how some of the parts we needed involved brute strength which goes against escape room rules, so we wasted a lot of time by being respectful rather than rough!

Jenny

I’m not the biggest fan of dirty rooms but do understand that it was needed here to add to the atmosphere.

 Bharath

Overall scores