Company:
The Panic Room – Harlow

Location:
Inside Quasar Harlow, Broadwalk, 1-5 Harvey Centre Approach, Harlow, CM20 1HF

Synopsis:
This epic immersive adventure will blow you away! Ever wanted to be like Indiana Jones and be in your own movie? This is your shot! Your mission will be breaking into an ancient Egyptian tomb to try and make a massive discovery. The situation takes a turn for the worse, you are trapped inside so you will need to work together to escape or become part of history. So explorers, can you escape The Tomb?

Date we visited:
14 April 2018

Price at time of visit:
£17.50 per person for a group of 4

Goats attended:
Daiman, Jenny, Paul, Bharath

Did we escape?
Yes, with 22 minutes to spare

Value for money

6/10This game definitely looked nice, with the room being full of sand and some full-size props adorning the area but the game itself was incredibly basic. This is one to visit for the theming rather than actual gameplay.

 Daiman

6/10The game is relatively cheap, however as it is near its end it was a little damaged in parts. That being said it was a fun room and would be better for newbies rather than experienced gamers.

Jenny

7/10£17.50 each is a very reasonable price for an escape room. Although it had some issues and we got out too quickly meaning we only had 38 minutes of enjoyment for our money, I still enjoyed playing The Tomb.

Paul

6/10The value in this room comes in the theming, the room being full of sand.

 Bharath

Theming

8/10You know what, the set felt quite sparse but it had an air of authenticity about it. It’s such a small and silly thing really but filling the entire room with sand added so much to the atmosphere.

 Daiman

8/10The design of the room was to make you feel like you were in an Egyptian tomb. I really liked the set design with the crawling in the beginning, to the sand to the statues. The added element of the sand sold it to me. The only downside to the theming was all the Yale padlocks. Not sure they had those in Egypt at that time which is why my score isn’t higher.

Jenny

8/10They have put the effort in with the room decor. I liked the large statues, Aztec features and sand filled floors. However some of the puzzles involved technology that you wouldn’t expect to see in a tomb, which breaks the illusion a bit.

Paul

7/10The theming is what makes this room different from others. They try to get that tomb feeling by crawling around to solve puzzles.

 Bharath

Uniqueness

7/10Being honest, in a ‘normal’ environment, this would’ve scored a lot lower. As mentioned, the game is exceedingly basic but it gets a pass from me due to the immersive nature of the set.

 Daiman

7/10Having played a few Egyptian tombs, I found the story and set similar to other games. What made this game stand out to the others was the use of the sand.

Jenny

7/10They’ve put a layer of sand on the floors which most rooms with this sort of theme don’t do. There’s also a long crawl space to get into the room. There was one on-theme padlock which I’ve never seen before (it took us a while to work out how to open it!)

Paul

6/10There wasn’t anything too unique about this room. The usual walls covered with Egyptian symbols.

 Bharath

Puzzles

2/10This is where the experience totally fell apart for me. We managed to progress quicker than we should have done because the game provided too many parts of a solution early on. Recurring things like this contributed to our very early escape. Elsewhere, the puzzles were just a bit too simplistic though I wonder whether that’s because they were adhering to the theme…

 Daiman

6/10The puzzles in the room were themed to the room well, however I’ve never been a fan of padlocks and I felt there were too many. There was one really fun game with lasers which increased my score but I felt let down that we had solved puzzles but weren’t aware as there was no noise/notifications.

Jenny

6/10There were a lot of locks and keys in this room – a few too many for my liking. A couple of the puzzles were a bit flawed as we were able to bypass parts of them to get to the answer. I particularly liked the X marks the spot hunting and what we needed the mirrors for, even though it didn’t fit in with the theme. But overall it was a little too easy for me.

Paul

5/10Like with a lot of other rooms that have been around for a while, the room is padlock heavy, however there was one padlock that I have not seen before. Some of the puzzles you could get through with brute force. Also, some of the mechanisms when going through the different sections seemed flimsy.

 Bharath

The good

The set was great and I loved the way that you entered the game.

 Daiman

The set design was done well and I’m sure if we had played this in the beginning of its life then it would have been more epic. The host was really friendly as well which adds to the experience.

Jenny

The theming is the best part about this room. Travelling back in time to an ancient Egyptian tomb where you play around in the sand makes this really enjoyable.

Paul

It was fun to do an escape room on sand, it makes the room feel a bit different.

 Bharath

The bad

It was the puzzles and flow for me. Also, a minor thing but on the theming, they had one really cool era-appropriate lock but every other lock was your straight up Yale padlock – given the theming everywhere else, this really stood out.

 Daiman

I felt that due to age some of the puzzles were a bit damaged. I also found that having no clear noise when puzzles were solved wasted time. Last but no means least the clue system is delivered by radios which you have to hold down for three seconds to talk!

Jenny

There was one puzzle that we never needed to solve. We asked the host about it and he revealed that it got broken a long time ago and they left it in as a red herring as it was too complicated for them to fix. This seems a lazy option to me. There was a lack of feedback when correctly solving puzzles which meant we didn’t know we had solved them and the host had to inform us over the radio. We solved two games before we were supposed to, indicating a flawed design. We were only given two torches between four so I couldn’t go off on my own to explore the room.

Paul

As some of the puzzles could be solved through guess work and brute force, it takes the fun out of the game a little bit.

 Bharath

Overall scores