Two weekends ago, I met up with a ragtag bunch of friends (Fran from Whinge Whinge Wine and James from You Have to Laugh) and family to get locked in the craziest escape room experience I have ever seen.
When I was emailed by Handmade Mysteries and invited to choose one of their adventures to put to the test and write about I was a little bit disappointed. You see, they are based in London or Brighton and seen as I live in Manchester it seemed like a bit of an effort. However, one look at their website and I knew that I had to make it work so after checking everyone’s diaries we agreed to visit Poppa Plock’s Wonky Workshop Escape Room in Islington. We were gifted this experience which meant we didn’t pay to play but all thoughts are my own.
Handmade Mysteries have a variety of games but it was Poppa Plock’s Wonky Workshop which captured my attention. It could have been the huge eyes of a ventriloquist dummy called Oki or this super creepy yet strangely tempting video.
The pure weirdness of this particular escape room really had me intrigued and we couldn’t wait to get started. I have done escape rooms before which have all sorts of different puzzles yet this one was all about combination locks, and there were a lot of them. If you didn’t proceed in the right order you would soon get in a muddle but thankfully my team were good at staying on track and listening carefully to any clues Oki gave us.
I would really love to tell you more about some of the more humorous parts of our adventure but I feel that it would give too much away however let it be said we looked for codes, clues and numbers in some rather unusual places. This is an escape room where there is a lot to distract you if you allow yourself to be distracted but thankfully Oki will keep you on the right path if only you listen to him.
The aim of this particular escape room is to rebuild Roy a robotic man who has lost his limbs which can now be found in locked boxes. Each limb unlocked leads to more clues which lead to more locks and so it goes on. This game is not for the fainthearted, Poppa Plonk was murdered, there is blood, it is dark and there are an amazing amount of creepy dolls and toys looking at you from all corners of the room.
Now huge apologies for the awful picture, I think Wynn the wind-up soldier who was our guide on this adventure needs a bit more practice with modern technology but as you can see we got out in good time and this was definitely a great team to work with.
The room is for ages 18 plus (and understandably really because it is very dark and twisted in places) and is suitable for groups of between 2 and 6 players. I loved our group of six. It allowed us to naturally work together on two different clues at the same time which meant that we were able to open the combination locks quicker. I think although possible with 2 players certain elements would be tricky and you might not always have someone able to listen to any clues Oki is giving you which were sometimes extremely useful.
Overall this was an amazing Escape Room and one I highly recommend although maybe not if you don’t like dolls or clowns or creepy toys. I can’t wait to try out their other adventures, I am really intrigued by their outdoor adventure “Operation Mindfall” so hopefully I will be able to tell you all about that one soon.