On a recent trip to Oxford, I saw signs for the newly-built Escape Hunt at the Westgate Centre. Helen had been mentioning doing this for a while, so I booked it up. Would our team, Team Helen, be able to work together and save the day?
There were six escapes to choose from, the science fiction scenario is based on Doctor Who, the story built around a re-awakening Dalek! As my daughter and I are huge Whovians, and after having two Daleks preside over my 50th birthday party, I had to pick this one. At its core, our team has 31 years experience of working together, with Bella joining us 17 years ago and Billy, 12, we should be able to cope with most things.
Another team that is close to my heart is Aston Villa. Last season culminated in a first trophy win in 30 years. Several key players moved on in the summer, new players have been bought in and need time to adjust. We have had a very slow start to the season so far 1 win, 1 draw and 3 losses. There is not panic, the fans trust Emery. He has unparalleled control at the club and has a proven track record – he is a specialist at building winning teams. I have been listening to his biography: Rise of the Villains over the summer. It explains how he does this since his arrival in October 2022 by working on the mentality of a team using data, science and sheer hard work. A group of talented individuals cannot achieve greatness alone, it takes teamwork.
Escape rooms also require high-level teamwork. The team enters a room containing a series of puzzles, is locked in and has a limited amount of time to work together to solve them. The aim is to escape, perhaps collecting treasure or defeating an antagonist along the way. Don’t worry – only basic core knowledge is required, any specialized or little-known information required will be within the room itself. Escape rooms are everywhere now; a lot of our friends said their kids had done one, adding that they hadn’t.
Escape Rooms may be a Gen Z phenomena, but game shows where contestants progressed by solving puzzles have been on TV since the 80’s. The Adventure Game, The Crystal Maze and Knightmare were such shows. With the popularity of live-action holiday attractions in America, video games, and team-building experiences, escape rooms as we know them today began appearing everywhere from the early 2000s. By 2019 there were more than 50,000 escape rooms around the world.
There are lots of references to escape rooms on TV. In Homer and Her Sisters (S36E9 2024) The Simpsons visit the ‘Fun Once’ Escape rooms to escape from a stricken Russian submarine. In the Family Guy episode Baby Stewie (S18E15 2020), the Griffins go to an escape room when they are forced to find an alcohol-free activity. The darker side of the concept is explored in the 2019 psychological thriller Escape Room, and an entire episode of the brilliant Inside Number 9, Ctrl Alt Esc (S9E4 2024), is set entirely in a creepy escape room.
I know you can’t put a price on making family memories, but at £32 per player, my expectations for this were high. Escape Hunt is a global company and the production values here were very impressive. Narration was provided by the 15th Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa. The Doctor explained that he had teleported us onto a ship that was damaged and adrift in space. We had to restore the ship’s systems to full power before the badly damaged Dalek on board regained power. The room, the ship’s bridge, was a dimly lit 3x4m space with a caged Dalek in one corner, a couple of computer screens along one wall and a series of puzzles, slots and buttons across the others. Upon entry, the timer on the computer started counting down from 60 minutes.
The puzzles were fun, varied and there were plenty of Doctor Who references. Team Helen got to work. Billy volunteered to crawl through some air ducts to complete one task. The task that took us longest was where three of us had to work together as a team! The Dalek provided an element of terror (for me anyway!) as its threats became more coherent and more chilling after each puzzle was completed. The hints were unlimited, a couple of tasks required as to ask for a few, maybe it would have been useful to have to earn hints, perhaps by sacrificing some of our remaining time (or a team member!)
I had assumed that with a Dalek featuring in the story, the rooms would be accessible (definitely no stairs!) A quick check on their website confirmed this. Some of the features were lowered so that younger players could take part – the ideal height for wheelchair users. In our pre-game briefing, Mai, our guide, explained that the main door was openable from our side in an emergency. Already lost in the story, I decided that opening the door would cause catastrophic decompression and kill the rest of us instantly – but I kept this to myself. It felt a bit woke to me at the time, but I could see why this safety warning was necessary after five teenage girls died in an escape room fire in Poland in 2019.
Our guide did a great job of monitoring us throughout and ensured that hints appeared on the computer screen when required, lighting changed subtly and doors and drawers opened and closed when needed. Perhaps she was assisted by AI, but I know from running D&D adventures, that players never do what you expect them to. It must’ve been a constant struggle for her watching us on CCTV, shepherding us around the room, making it all make sense, without us realising. You have to keep the pace fast enough so that people enjoy the scenario and do not become too frustrated with it or each other.
We may not be elite athletes competing on the world stage, but we do have our own nutritionist and fitness coach (Helen) and we both try to set a good example for our kids. Our team emerged victorious and nobody got teleported, locked in or fell to their death. We had earned the ‘good ending’ and completed the room in 40 minutes, around the time it took the Flanders to escape from theirs. Their method was to pray to God for a solution! (I wish I’d thought of that!) Our guide generously explained that this room had the lowest completion rate of all of the escape rooms available. To celebrate, we had a victory drink in the bar, and a photo taken with our defeated nemesis! We’ll certainly be back for another adventure!
Richard C Brown MBE – September 2026
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