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Review: Pirate Ship - Extremescape, Disley

Room Story - from Extremescape

A long time ago on the Carribean seas sailed the Spanish Galleon, Castoria. Captained by Zak Barrow and crewed by a gang of murderers & merciless cutthroats. Plundering ships of all kinds along India’s Malabar coast, Barrow was a Pirate, one of the most infamous Pirates of all time.

show more.... Barrow’s ship Castoria battled with the India Merchant, a huge treasure ship of 350 tons. In rough seas, the merchant vessel fired but due to a sudden ocean swell, the shot missed its mark. The pirates threw their grappling hooks, bringing the two ships together. And rapidly boarded the ship, soon Captain Barrow was in the possession of one of the greatest pirate treasures ever.

The ship disappeared in 1722 and was not seen again until now!

So me hearties, all hands on deck, find the clues, solve the riddles, find the treasure, Then dare to escape, you have 90 minutes but fail, and remember – dead men tell no tales Are you ready to meet Zak Barrow, find the treasure and escape the Pirate Ship

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Key Stats

Room NamePirate Ship
VenueExtremescape
LocationDisley (near Stockport), UK
Date07/10/2017
Escape Time88:40
Team Size4
My Recommended Team Size4 - 6

Review

The other games I’ve played have always been in town and city locations, however, Extremescape is based on a farm a short drive away from Stockport. It’s easy to find and there’s lots of clear signage pointing towards the rooms when you arrive. You enter the building into a room themed like a cell (complete with toilet!), before heading upstairs to the waiting area outside the room.

Our host was great, she introduced us to the room and took us through some instructions. There was a very laid back approach as we were free to exit the room at any time to get water from the fridge or take a break. We stayed in the room as we wanted to stay in the zone, but some teams might appreciate this. We stayed and chatted to the host and her husband at the end of the game, it was really interesting to find out about their inspiration and future plans. They’re clearly very passionate about escape rooms!

Before entering the main room, you enter a small area to listen to some themed “pre-show” audio introducing you to the room. This was a really nice touch and got you excited to enter the room. At the end of the audio the door automatically opened revealing a large and well themed room. There’s a lot in the room to see and explore, with some excellent props to reinforce the pirate theme.

This room is very riddle and padlock based, with lots of text on the wall to decipher and a variety of key and number based padlocks to unlock. I personally prefer rooms with a greater number of physical puzzles rather than lots of padlocks, but they’ve made it work really well and managed to create lots of interesting puzzles. It’s not all padlocks, there were quite a few special effects throughout the game that created a number of wow moments. It felt like quite a good balance between different types of puzzles.

Some of the puzzles in the room were quite difficult. There was one in particular that we never would have solved without a clue. To be honest, we required quite a few clues throughout the game to keep us progressing – these were delivered via a sceen. Some of these clues were down to our lazy and sloppy searching – I missed a number of things throughout the game (one in particular caused a last minute dash at the end!).

We were really impressed with the ending. As the game progresses, you really do feel the special effects starting to ramp up. The grand finale utilises things you’ve collected throughout the game to end on a “wow” moment that felt really exciting and well put together.

We escaped – but we weren’t far off using up the whole 90 minutes. We had a really great time and would recommend this room. This room suits larger teams particularly well as it’s very spacious and given the fact that it’s non-linear, there are lots of things that people can be working on simultaneously.

The team were Becky, Julie, Daniel and Beth,
Ratings

Overall A great quality escape room with lots of excellent theming and 90 minutes of fun, rather than the standard 60 minutes.
Difficulty It’s not an easy game and the time you’re given to complete it reflects that. We had to take quite a few clues to progress. The room is non-linear which also adds to the difficulty at times.
Fun It’s a fun room, there’s plenty to see and interact with. There’s also some really great sound effects.
Puzzles There are a variety of puzzles to solve in the room, all working to build up to a grand finale. There were some really clever elements to the puzzles that we enjoyed.
Immersion It’s a really high quality room which keeps you immersed in the Pirate Ship theme.
Surprises There were a few surprises throughout the game and a particularly good ending.