I recently had the excellent fortune of taking part in an Escape Room tour of Madrid, organised by the wonderful people over at www.unboxd.com. Ten Escape Rooms over a weekend, everything organised for me and I just have to turn up? Yes please. 

As we don’t tend to cover non-UK based escape rooms in depth on The Escape Roomer, this is more of a ‘holiday special’ through which I will give you a brief overview of each game.

Some additional info: We were travelling as a group of 6, but split off into two groups of 3 to play (IMO the perfect number to play ERs!).

So, in order of play…

Shock Creations: La Santa

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The first of two ‘scary’ rooms we’d do on the trip, La Santa has been voted #10, #4 and #5 in the world on TERPECA for the last 3 years respectively – that’s an enormous rank to live up to…

If you read my recent review of The Acid Bath Murderer, you’ll know that I’m not really bothered about horror-themed experiences (I promise this’ll be the last time I mention it), thus I’m not really qualified to give an accurate reading on the scare-factor. One of my team did later remark that they can’t remember the last time they felt genuinely scared like that, so I’d say that’s a pretty solid grading. As with TABM though, the quality of the experience completely trumped any kind of disinterest I had. 

Some exceptional puzzles mixed in with some impressive set-pieces and a huge space to roam in really shows why La Santa is so highly rated. There was one moment in particular towards the end that made us all actually gasp.

Colors Escape Room by Experiencity: Yellow Experience

⭐⭐⭐

The first of a couple of rooms at company Experiencity, but also the poorer of the two, the Yellow Experience is a ‘homage’ to the Goonies (I mean it is basically the Goonies story), but leaning heavily into the pirate theming (incidentally, the first of 3 pirate rooms for the trip!)

The set was impressive, and there was a wonderful moment with some ropes and a physical contraption that sort of blew my mind, but it was a bit rough around the edges and the puzzles were lacklustre – especially the end task, which we really struggled with. Even with the GM babying us through it didn’t make any sense, (though to be fair their poor translating didn’t help).

Our host was fun though, and the clue delivery system was novel…I’m pretty sure I spent a good chunk of the game flirting with a dead parrot.

Colors Escape Room by Experiencity: Blue Experience

⭐⭐⭐💫

Themed around WW2 and had us playing the Spanish, acting as Brits but secretly Germans…wait (yeah, we actually have no idea who we were supposed to be either), the puzzles were comparatively better (to the Yellow Experience).

A more cohesive experience, we had an incredibly enthusiastic host who left us with the very memeable quotation ‘fuck the red line’ which became a bit of a catchphrase for the trip. 

Madness Toledo: The Mystery of Scum Island

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Lucasarts’ classic point n click adventures were my very first introduction to puzzle games and the reason that I adore them so much to this day (although it’s debatable as to whether ‘use everything with everything’ is valid grounds for successfully ‘solving’). TMoSI had been on my to-play list for the longest time – this was basically a dream room for me.

Like 99.9% of Escape Rooms in the world made about existing IPs, this was not officially licensed, and therefore there wasn’t really a story that felt canon to the Monkey Island universe (I don’t actually remember if there was a story at all, but that’s more memory issue I think). It was more of a loosely themed pirate game packed full of references – including some from other Lucasarts classics.

The game was fun; there were some nice moments and an extra secondary mission inovling searching (which I always love), but the set – as impressive as it was, looked tired. I don’t know if they’ll bother sprucing it up though, as I’ve recently learned they’re closing down. Very sad times, but I’m glad I managed to play.

The Darkest Room: The Revolution Of The Bats

⭐

60 minutes in 100% pitch black sounds exciting doesn’t it! Well… potentially at least. In the lead up to the game, our minds collectively boggled at what such an experience could entail…sadly our minds continued to boggle even after we finished.

We left feeling like it could have been so much more, but let’s be real, it’s pretty obvious that making an escape room where you can’t see anything is going to be *really hard*.

But hey, at least we learned a whole new technique for using combination locks blindly!

La Cronosfera Agencia Del Tiempo: The Professor’s Disappearance

⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

Just class all the way through, very well-kept premises, slick presentation, extremely satisfying, plentiful puzzles and a great space to move around in. It was clear to us even from playing the game that the owner was a man very passionate about building escape rooms, but this was hammered home when we were given the debrief by the one and only. It’s hard to decide which room was my favourite of the trip, but this was a contender for sure!

The Last Monkey: Wandering Captain

⭐⭐⭐💫

Out of all 10 rooms we played, exactly 0 of them had a waiting area – it seems like it’s not really a thing in Spain in comparison to the UK, but the Wandering Captain went a step further and didn’t even have a pre-game area. As soon as we were buzzed in, other than a thick-spanish accented voice telling us to throw our jackets in the corner we were in the game and on our way without hesitation.

Some really nice puzzles, including probably my favourite of the trip involving a map-coordinate puzzle, my only frustration with the game was that a puzzle which was used exclusively for the ending was in the game from about half way through, so we ended up wasting ages on it. It was only when we realised that the same thick-spanish accent had been telling us to ignore the BAGS and not the BOX. Much confusion was had, which then turned into much LOLs later (In anticipation, I warned the other team ahead of time to watch out for box/bagsgate, for which they were later very grateful).

Another highlight – a member on the design team had illustrated a pocket-book guide to some of the puzzles that appeared in the game which had some of the nicest hand-drawings I’ve ever seen.

Descifra: The Labyrinth

⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

The Labyrinth had us start the game by being Honey-I-Shrunked, hopping on a mini-slide and entering the giant ear canal of the game master’s grandfather…need I say more? Heavily inspired by artist M. C. Escher – who just so happens to be my favourite artist – The Labyrinth was a literal trip from start to finish; maximum points on style alone.

Overall the puzzles were fantastic, although we had a few tech issues, and one of the puzzles involved some very obviously AI generated images (yuck), but I think at least 75% of ideas I’d never seen before, including something so obvious that we genuinely all smacked our heads in unison (in the best way).

Locktopus Escape Game: The Tailor

⭐⭐💫

You know that feeling when you’re doing an activity, something negative happens and then it doesn’t matter what you do, nothing seems to go right? If you’ve ever played golf, it’s the perfect example of this – the moment you hit a bad ball, everything you do from then on is a disaster.

Murphy’s Law in full effect, we had a terrible time at The Tailor, but it wasn’t because the game was bad per se, it’s just it didn’t gel well with us, we barely solved any puzzles without needing a little hint, and we left feeling very disappointed with ourselves.

That being said, there were red herrings everywhere, and one puzzle had us actually destroy part of a prop, so maybe I’m being too nice? Either way, the other team said they had a good time, soooo…I dunno. It was one of the strangest Escape Room experiences I’ve ever had, and my teammates felt the same way.

Bite The Fly: Bites Motel (‘scary’ version)

⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

The last game we played on the trip, and oh boy what a goodun! Themed around a motel check-in and a haunted-ish mansion, we simply had a brilliant time.

No doubt my favourite ever themed-introduction to an escape room (even insofar as putting our bags/jackets away). Without spoiling it, the reason they could get away with such a feature was because their warehouse location meant that the owners had an enormous amount of space to play with.

We chose the optional ‘scary’ version, which has the host running around the outer space appearing at windows and banging things as we passed room to room; the way it was set up felt like there were multiple people running the same game. 

Our host was none other than the wonderful and very talented Carlos, who had previously worked at Escape Plan Ltd in London prior to moving back to Madrid, so it was extra nice to see him and catch up after all these years!