Can You Escape York: Operation Contagion | Review

Can You Escape – Operation Contagion Review | You are a crack team of scientists, developing a cure to the deadly CY-Virus sweeping the globe, infecting humanity with the zombie plague! The lab has been overrun and sent into lockdown. It is now up to you and your team to retrieve the cure and distribute it to the world, before the laboratory self incinerates in 60 minutes time… Can You Escape?

Date Played: January 2024
Time Taken: 39:00
Number of Players: 4
Difficulty: Easy-Medium

York is another one of those cities I’m pretty sure I’ve played all the escape rooms at. Well, apart from the big and slightly overpriced for the region chain companies. Which is why I keep a special eye out for any new openings from my smaller favourite companies, and one such came earlier last  year at Can You Escape – a favourite in both York and Edinburgh – with Operation Contagion.

The only problem is, I didn’t realise until this visit that Can You Escape is in fact owned by the Escape franchise. I don’t quite know when Can You Escape came under the Escape label, or perhaps they always were and just kept it well hidden, but I was slightly disappointed to find out that Operation Contagion wasn’t a new room but instead is a room that already exists under the name “Contagion” at plenty of sites at the UK, (including various Escape sites and at Gamesaints Sheffield) by different names. Sometimes just “Contagion” or in the case of Gamesaints Sheffield, “Vaccine Vault”.

Now not having played two instances myself, I can’t be sure they’re 100% identical. I have it on good authority that Escape franchises can pick and choose puzzles which may make them different. I compared notes with a friend, and it seemed the same, but I could be wrong. Regardless, I wanted to make a big point of pointing that out as I always feel a bit iffy about rooms that have different names but are identical. I couldn’t find anything on any of their websites stating that the rooms were the same, meaning it’s very easy to book the same room twice, or even three times across the three different brands.

To be sure, we did have fun. Nobody in our team of 4 had actually played Contagion before anywhere else – so for the purposes of reviewing it we should take the room at face value. It’s just… An important detail that could definitely affect someone else’s feelings about the room. But with that out of the way, let’s get into Operation Contagion in more detail.

Stop the Apocalypse, Escape (into) the Room

The premise of Operation Contagion is fairly straightforward. There’s a zombie apocalypse sweeping the globe and the world is in lockdown – not too hard to imagine post-2020, hey! – but this laboratory has developed a cure. Great! We’re saved! Only the lab is also in lockdown and there’s just 60 minutes before it self-incinerates. Ahh, not so great.

What follows is a two-part experience. First, you need to break into the lab in lockdown. Then, you need to find and release the cure, deploying it in the correct location to save the world. Personally, I quite enjoy escaping “into” the room formats. It’s the easiest answer for teams that turn to the exit door and say “well the door is unlocked so I can just walk out now”. Yes, yes you can, but in this room you don’t want to. After all there’s a hoard of zombies on the other side.

Players can expect an medium difficulty room that largely focuses around padlocks and keys with one or two pieces of interesting technology along the way. Even where technology is used, we found ourselves invariably still looking for codes and digits, even if the input method varied across analogue and digital locks.

One of the notable things however is that there is a lot to do, and some of it can be done concurrently – meaning it’s a mostly linear room with some key non-linear moments that everyone can get involved in. In our team of four, we all almost always had something fun to do, and so it struck a good balance for this team size.

Welcome to the Lab

In terms of decor and vibes, the room was fairly sparsely decorated – but that kind of worked well for the laboratory vibe. I don’t spend a lot of time in laboratories, but I reckon they do have white walls and a few display cabinets with scentific equipment in them. The second room was slightly more interestingly decorated, giving off the vibes of a place being locked down and secured from a zombie apocalpyse. In both, there was a militaristic undertone in a few items of decor I couldn’t quite place my finger on narratively. I mean, who were these military personnel and if they were protecting the lab where are they now?

Our Games Master had a little difficulty with the soundtrack at the start, but by the time we got into the room all the creepy background laboratory sounds worked just fine, so we “in the zone”. We were given the choice of lights on or lights off. Whilst off allowed the subtler lighting to really add to the effect, we did find a few puzzles hard to read and so ended up opting for the lights. But hey, if it really were a zombie apocalypse, I’d want to know what I was doing.

Operation Contagion – The Verdict

York isn’t a city known for it’s excellent escape rooms and, up until now Can You Escape was probably my first recommendation simply for it’s consistently decent rooms and nice customer service every time I’ve visited. That this room exists in other sites around the UK dampens that recommendation slightly, but not by much. The room was still perfectly fine, given it was our first time trying it. If you want a solid, decent escape room experience in York, then Can You Escape is worthwhile. This one in particular was lock-heavy, but had some fun moments of technology and a few real headscratcher puzzles.

As a final note on that customer service, our Games Master today was Elsie. She was fantastically enthusiastic, and really great to chat to before and after. Despite some minor technical issues she made us feel very welcome and comfortable, and despite the venue being quite busy at the time, handled all the teams coming and going with practised ease. A big shout out!

Overall, I’d recommend this room for folks who haven’t tried escape rooms before. It may not challenge an enthusiast, but it’s a fun gateway room.

Operation Contagion can be played at Can You Escape York. And at the time of writing, also in Dublin and Sheffield.