Beneath an unknown location lies a basement with no clear way out… An environment designed to disorient and break those trapped inside it. You and your team must confront a relentless series of challenges where time is against you and mistake are costly.
Room No. 131 – ESCAPED in 45m04s
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
💃 “Hostess with the Mostest” Award
🤩 “Epic Moment” Award
After surviving The Cabin and allowing our heart rates to return to something approaching normal, it was time for Chapter Two: The Basement. Unfortunately, the same serial killer is rather unhappy that his previous plans were foiled and is now hunting down those responsible. Spoiler alert: that would be us.
Hosting
Charlotte took over hosting duties for our second game and, like Bradley, turned out to be a fellow escape room enthusiast. In fact, she’s played more rooms than us, which we took personally.
The excellent live acting from The Cabin also returns, providing plenty of creepy encounters as we attempted to escape. The acting and improvisation were superb, managing to be genuinely unsettling while also responding brilliantly when we resorted to silliness to cope with being scared.
Our experience finished with another lengthy debrief with Charlotte. We could happily have spent hours chatting with both her and Bradley about their games, the industry and where we should play next.
Theming
The Basement begins with a blind entry, immediately creating that unpleasant feeling of being dropped somewhere you really don’t want to be. Starting inside a small cell, you must escape before progressing deeper into the killer’s workshop.
Compared with The Cabin, the environment is deliberately more bare-bones. That suits a basement setting, although it doesn’t create quite the same level of immersion as its predecessor. The live performance compensates for this considerably, with some excellent interactions and storytelling moments maintaining the tension throughout.
Puzzling
There are considerably more puzzles here than in The Cabin, and once again the flow is excellent. Everything felt intuitive, and we particularly appreciated the clear signposting showing which puzzles corresponded with which locks. This is especially appreciated when several similar locks were available.
The puzzles themselves were consistently clever and enjoyable, although we slightly preferred the more multi-layered challenges of The Cabin. That’s very much nitpicking, though, and The Basement still contains some excellent ideas. We particularly enjoyed a word-connection puzzle: something we’d love to see more often in escape rooms. Numbers have hogged the limelight for long enough. Bring back words!
The final area becomes more non-linear, allowing different puzzles to be tackled simultaneously. That makes The Basement particularly suitable for larger teams who can divide and conquer before regrouping. There’s also another stressful decision to make towards the end, although the final puzzle itself didn’t provide quite the dramatic crescendo of The Cabin.
The Basement is an excellent continuation of the story, combining clever puzzles, great live acting and some brilliantly creepy moments. Of the two, The Cabin narrowly took our preference, but together they make a fantastic double feature. We escaped the cabin and survived the basement. Perhaps this particular serial killer should consider a career change. Get booking with Unsolved Mysteries at the link below:
