Deadlocked Escape Rooms: The Reading Witch | Review

The Reading Witch Review | Join a team of TV investigators to explore the ominous woods where the mysterious Reading Witch is said to have resided. Unusual noises and ritualistic chanting has been heard nearby yet no-one has ever returned from the cabin. Can you debunk the rumours or will you fall foul to the witch yourselves?

Date Played: December 2025
Time Taken: 1 hr 15 min
Number of Players: 5
Difficulty: Medium

Just a stone’s throw from London is the neighbouring town of Reading and it’s home to not just one, but several fantastic escape room companies. When talking to escape room enthusiasts down south you’ll often hear questions like “which are the best rooms in London?” followed by “well this or that is good, but really you should hop on a train to Reading“. Which is exactly what we (a team consisting of David Staffell, Alex & Tom from COGS/Clockwork Dog, and David Middleton from Bewilder Box) did of an evening a week before Christmas. First up on our to-play was The Locktopus. Though designed by the team from Deadlocked, The Locktopus is based and operated out of Knockout Escape Rooms, just a short walk across town. The Reading Witch on the other hand is at Deadlocked’s main site on Castle Hill.

Deadlocked doesn’t have a waiting room, and for The Reading Witch in the particular you meet your host who arrives in character, outside the front door. By European escape room comparisons (something I’ll come back to) this is a fairly exciting cold open to the story of The Reading Witch. In it, you play a team of TV investigators from “Frightseers” sent in to investigate a strange location in Reading that previous investigators went missing inside. Once inside, you’re equipped with a TV producer vest, microphones, and given your briefing. This is also the chance to use the bathroom and lock away your items if you want, but from this point in you’re very much in character.

What follows is about as close to an iconic European horror room as I’ve seen in the UK, making it well worthy of it’s TERPECA status as no.1 in the UK. The set design scrappy but dark and atmospheric enough I didn’t once break immersion or believe I was in anything other than a creepy cabin in the woods. Similarly the story flowed very well and was underpinned by great acting. It was in the style of a lot of rooms I’ve played in Europe in the last few years – that is, since I realised I absolutely adore horror games and didn’t avoid them like the plague. It’s a mix of the cold open, the strong storyline, the well timed lighting and jumpscares, and of course the sheer amount of love gone into the experience. The team have done a lot with a little and proven just how good rooms in the UK could be. This isn’t your average UK horror room. It’s creepy in all the right ways. Other owners, take note!

Lights, Camera, Action!

But what did we particularly love about The Reading Witch? For me, the mix of lighting and sound to create a sense of space was top tier. The lighting was sparse, as a good horror game should be, but it always subtly nudged you towards what you should be focusing on and away from carefully obscured details which you didn’t need to look at yet. If we were ever unsure what to do, just follow the lighting. After all, the only way out of a horror game is to push through.

In a similar way, the atmospheric sound and audio throughout really elevated the experience. As well as a well-crafted introduction video from your “director”, subtle sound was played throughout. Whether on purpose or accidentally, distinct soundscapes and cues synchronised well with the environment, what we were doing, and perhaps most importantly for a horror room – the scares.

Taking Centre Stage

But maybe even better than the lighting and sound, this room really shines in it’s acting. Owners James and Charlie were our hosts, taking various characters and actor moments throughout the experience. These characters served both as gates to the story, humourous interactions, sources of scares, and vessels for frankly quite epic plot twists. We had an additional GM running the room from afar, meaning this is a three-host minimum escape room. Wow! Another reason I compare it to it’s European thematic counterparts.

Puzzling Through the Reading Witch’s Cabin

In terms of puzzles, how does The Reading Witch fare? Well, it’s a fairly classic experience in terms of puzzles! The room errs on being more analogue than high tech, which makes total sense given the theme, so you can expect a fair few locks and physical puzzles to solve throughout. Pull it, push it, bop it- the puzzles, not the witch. Please don’t bop the witch.

In our playthrough, we did manage to bypass a whole section by discovering a key too early by accident (due to either a maglock failure or a resetting error, I’m not sure, but I won’t go into detail else I spoil it for anyone else). However, had we not been told, we wouldn’t have noticed. The puzzles flowed pretty well throughout and it didn’t feel like anything was missing.

Overall, the puzzles were good but nothing exceptional. They worked well for their theme, they were diegetic, and they were fun to solve. I can’t ask for anything more! That said, I might just be taking this opinion as we’d just left The Locktopus, and it’s hard to compare it with The Reading Witch. The Locktopus may well go down as my favourite game for pure puzzles in all of the UK. So I’m spoiled for puzzle-choice on that one.

The Reading Witch: The Verdict

If The Locktopus broke all the rules of escape rooms and created something brand new and unique, then The Reading Witch did the opposite – it followed all of the rules and executed them near-perfectly. Both rooms are absolutely exceptional experiences for different ways, and playing them back to back makes it very difficult not to compare them. On that note, as a team we were split on which rooms we preferred. I, myself keep flip flopping between which of the two I prefer and as I write this I simply can’t decide. They were both great and I had heaps of fun playing both of them.

What The Reading Witch does really well is create a sense of world, an atmosphere and tell a great story. When an alien comes to planet earth and asks me about escape rooms, I’ll take them here as the example of exactly what it should be.

We completed the experience in 1hr 15 minutes which felt like a good length of time and even gave us time leftover to pop into the pub round the corner for a drink before heading back into London.

If you’re in the area, and even if you’re not in the area, The Reading Witch is well worth a visit.

The Reading Witch can be booked by heading to Deadlocked’s website here.

Please Note: We were not charged for our experience, however this wasn’t in exchange for, nor with the expectation of a review. This has not affected the content of our review.