TimeTrap: Imaginarium review

Published by Escape Goats on

Company:
TimeTrap

Location:
11 Friar Street, Reading, RG1 1DB

Synopsis:
Professor Potch has made a mistake with his calculations on a previous mission. It was only small but the shift in time has resulted in a terrible incident further in the future… In 1863, Professor Potch’s favourite author, Lewis Carroll, has been caught up in a horse and cart accident in Bucklebury market, and is now in hospital suffering from a head injury that has caused some funny goings-on, most dreadfully, memory loss! And the worst part – Lewis Carroll had just begun writing his masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which Professor Potch now fears will never be published! To make up for his mistake, Potch has been working day and night to develop a new machine, and is now looking for volunteers, not only to go back in time through his time warp, but to be shrunk down and sent deep into Lewis Carroll’s brain to put things right!

Date we visited:
25 February 2018

Price at time of visit:
£25 per person for a group of 4 in peak time

Goats attended:
Daiman, Jenny, Paul, Bharath

Did we escape?
Yes – with 2 minutes to spare

Value for money

8/10For the asking price you get a well-polished adventure with a fun, unique theme. It’s great value for the experience provided

 Daiman

8/10At £25 pp this is the medium price for an escape room, however you can certainly see why when you join the experience of the rooms. The host and quality of the rooms really stand out.

Jenny

8/10At £25 each it’s an average price but the game oozes quality, being both very well made and presented. There’s more than one room to explore and they are pretty spacious. I found the whole experience really enjoyable and worth the money.

Paul

7/10The room and waiting area has a very clean, professional, welcoming look. For what you get it is value for money and worth a try.

 Bharath

The entrance to Timetrap

Theming

8/10I was surprised by this – everything in the game was well designed with a very professional finish. It was a very pleasant and colourful space to spend time in.

 Daiman

9/10The theming in this room is excellent, you really feel liked you are in world of Alice in Wonderland. The attention to detail in this experience is really high, the room is really clean and in mint condition. The clue system kept on point too.

Jenny

9/10They have done a fantastic job with the theming, with the rooms looking exciting and detailed but uncluttered. Both the rooms and games link well to the Alice in Wonderland theme.

Paul

8/10The Time Trap guys were quite imaginative in their Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland mixed in with a brain theming making a room that feels quite fresh for the time travel genre.

 Bharath

Uniqueness

8/10The theme of exploring an unconscious mind is a new one to me and there were some cool puzzles to complement this.

 Daiman

7/10Whilst the theming was on point, I felt like there were no wow factors for uniqueness. However some of the puzzles were different to what I’d played which is why the score remains high.

Jenny

8/10They have gone for an Alice in Wonderland theme which makes a nice change from the usual escape room fare of offices or dark scary rooms. There are no particularly stand out puzzles though.

Paul

7/10Even though time travel as a theme has been done time and time again, the concept in this room felt unique.

 Bharath

The lobby area with t-shirts for sale

Puzzles

8/10There was a nice mix of things to do here including a fair bit of invisible tech. My main takeaway from the puzzles were that they perfectly suited the theme and story that the game was telling.

 Daiman

8/10There was a lot of variety of puzzles in this game and there was always something for us to do. The puzzles in this room required a lot of team work which I really liked. Even though the puzzles were fairly basic I can’t score low as the theming was so strong.

Jenny

8/10It’s a pretty linear room meaning you have to solve the puzzles in order. There are lots of puzzles to do with little repetition. They are well thought out and there wasn’t a single puzzle that I thought cheated by – the ones we did struggle with were our fault, not the fault of the game. As mentioned previously, there are no particularly stand out puzzles though.

Paul

8/10The puzzles itself are quite logical and clean cut, they connect to the theme of the room reasonably well. It’s a very linear game as one puzzle leads on to the next, so more often or not the team were working together to solve puzzles rather than going off to do their own thing. There are a lot of puzzles so the whole team will be kept busy.

 Bharath

The good

It was just a brilliantly crafted time. A fair few rooms often feel quite cynical in their construction with lots of tenuous activities but the level of thought and care that went into this game were evident.

 Daiman

The theming and design of this escape room was excellent. I’d highly recommend this to everyone. Certainly up there with one of my top rooms.

Jenny

The room and puzzles are very well designed and presented. They have put a lot of effort in to make them look great and fun to play. The professionalism extends to the waiting area as well, where there’s free water and toffees for a welcoming touch.

Paul

After doing this room I came out feeling, ‘I want to try their other room’, which is always a good sign.

 Bharath

The bad

I actually can’t think of a negative here! At a push, I think maybe I’d prefer it be less linear than it was but it wasn’t something that really impacted us.

 Daiman

I feel the puzzles could be modernised a little without threatening the theme too much. Otherwise nothing too negative to say here.

Jenny

To get to the venue, you have to walk through an alleyway full of bins and go up what looks like a fire exit, so it’s not a great first impression.

Paul

This room I feel requires more skill games as they are mostly logic based.

 Bharath

Overall scores

  • Value for money - 7.75/10
    7.8/10
  • Theming - 8.5/10
    8.5/10
  • Uniqueness - 7.5/10
    7.5/10
  • Puzzles - 8/10
    8/10
7.9/10