Escape the Past: A Trail of Burke and Hare | Review

A Trail of Burke and Hare Review | A body has been discovered in The Cowgate with wounds eerily reminiscent of a dark period of Edinburgh’s past… Beside the corpse, a satchel – deliberately placed, an ominous message within… The killer is obsessed, fixated on the story of Burke and Hare, the city’s most infamous murderers. Promising to kill again unless you can unravel their morbid puzzle…. The path ahead descends through Edinburgh’s darkest history. Discover the identity of their next victim. Save them — if you can…

Date Played: July 2025
Number of Players: 3
Time Taken: ~2 hours
Difficulty: Easy

“Two centuries past, they stalked these streets, to feed the surgeons the freshest meat…”

Listen, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again a little louder for folks in the back: Educational escape rooms are awesome!! And I don’t mean that in a naff way. I mean that in the kind of way where if you tell someone we’re going to learn how to use tan, sine and cosine, or that we’re about to sequence a genome, or even learn how to recognise morse code… They’ll probably groan. Or worse, be like “nope that’s not for me” and completely check out. And yet… All of those are things I’ve learnt to do in an escape room before. That’s pretty awesome.

Escape rooms can be a great tool for tricking an audience into learning something, and A Trail of Burke and Hare gets that balance pretty good. In fact, so do all of Escape the Past‘s escape rooms, for that matter! I wish more escape rooms took note of the local history and built their experiences around it.

Follow in the Footsteps of Burke and Hare

In A Trail of Burke and Hare you’re tasked with following in the footsteps of the original Edinburgh murderers, Burke and Hare, after a grizzly present day murder bares many of the same hallmarks of the originals. When a mysterious satchel and locked box bearing a note to you shows up, the police have no choice than to pass the evidence along and see if you can figure out what they missed. But time is not on your side – there’s another body due to show up very soon, so you’ll have to hurry!

On a sunny Edinburgh day – a rarity for the Scottish capital – two friends and I decided it was time to take on the challenge. We arrived at Escape the Past a little before our allocated start time, knocked on the door, and were ushered in to the dark waiting area of Escape the Past where our Games Master, Rosie was waiting for us. In A Trail of Burke and Hare, you’re given a small olive green satchel fitted with a tracking device and complete with a few knick-knacks we’d need on our travels. There was an old note book splattered with blood, a map, a locked box, and several puzzle components we’d need to use later.

The trail starts and ends at Escape the Past in Nicholson Square and takes you round many of the nearby area’s tourist hotspots, The Royal Mile, McEwan Hall, Grassmarket, and so on. There isn’t a strict time limit… Well, not exactly. You do need to give the satchel back eventually, and there is one moment where time will be a little more important than the rest of the game, but mostly you’re free to go at your own pace and take plenty of stops if you need to. Which we did (to get ice cream of course).

In terms of the puzzles, the game follows a linear flow. You’re given a map with each location clearly marked out and, on arrival at the location, you can turn to that page in the book to find out more about your challenge. There’s a little bit of hopping between what’s in the book, a chatbot to submit answers, additional content inside the bag, and of course what is happening in the environment around you. I particularly appreciate when an outdoor puzzle trail actually uses the outdoor well, and A Trail of Burke and Hare did this well. Instead of just vague plaques, each detail in the environment was thematically relevant, and allowed us to playfully interact with our surroundings. Nothing was particularly challenging – we didn’t find ourselves using any clues, or getting anything wrong, so it’s hard to judge the strength of the chatbot on how helpful it would have been beyond offering a way to input answers, but in all the system seemed robust.

The game also has a delightful ending. I don’t want to spoil it here, but I will say it accidentally caused us a lot of laughs, and the opportunity to start sprinting down the street which is always good fun. My only clue is that I’ve said in previous reviews I think Escape the Past does sound effects very well and they once again didn’t disappoint.

A Trail of Burke and Hare – The Verdict

Overall, I really enjoyed it. But then, I am a big enjoyer of outdoor puzzle trails, historical content, and anything that lets me eat ice cream whilst I solve challenges.

If we want to get really into the nitty-gritty and put my “game design hat” on for a second, I did end up discussing some puzzle technicalities with a friend after, and sure there are always ways those puzzles might have been improved. But overall, in considering the target audience (mostly families, tourists, and folks who want a little bit of puzzle solving alongside their daily dose of history) then I think this trail hits the nail on the head.

If I had only one criticism it’d be that A Trail of Burke and Hare errs on the side of being quite expensive for a puzzle trail – and not just by Edinburgh’s pricing standards. At the time of writing it’s £22 per person, which at a team of 4 would make it a little under double the price of the second most expensive trail in Edinburgh, and £4 per person less than the current most expensive in London. That’s a lot of numbers for me to say “I’m surprised”, but with the Fringe Festival just around the corner and the city being full of folks from all around the world, I have a sneaky suspicion they’ll still manage to sell out (so if you would like to play, make sure you book early). But for off season, it’s probably a little more than I’d expect.

That said, when all things are balanced I’d definitely recommend A Trail of Burke and Hare. Equally to both escape room enthusiasts and puggles (puzzle muggles) for an excellent day out in the Scottish capital.

If you’d like to book A Trail of Burke and Hare you can do so by heading to Escape the Past’s website here.

Please note, we weren’t charged for our experience but this has not affected the contents of the review at all.