Room Story - from Escapologic
The door creaks closed. In the pale light of your lantern, abandoned skeletons cast terrifying shadows on the walls. Frantically, you open your dusty satchel, praying for answers. Could this be all that remains of legendary explorer Crispin Sheppard, who mysteriously vanished all those years ago?
show more.... Rumours of an ancient curse shroud the stones of this pitch-black tomb. You're sure this is where the treasure is buried. But now you're all alone in the dark-and in the cold air of the crypt, something primeval is stirring...
Cryptic was the second Nottingham escape room to take shape in the diabolical mind of our creator! A secretive, mad genius who rarely sees the light, he delved deep into his love of the medieval, the mysterious, and classic adventure to bring you this compelling room.
Macabre, insidious, and packed with surprises, Cryptic is a room that doesn't suffer fools gladly. Take too many wrong turns as you try to puzzle out the solution to its centuries-old mystery, and your bones could be added to the gruesome ornaments littering the barely-visible flagstones...
What are the clues trying to tell you? Do the pitiful remnants of these past explorers have more to say than their empty eyes and bony mouths are letting on? You know you should heed the warnings. You know you should turn back. But now the door has slammed behind you, and the deadly gold-lust is driving you on.
Like all of our Nottingham escape rooms, Cryptic is best challenged by two or more brave questers. Join the ranks of the treasure-hunters who have passed through its grim portals. Will you take your place as one of the few who have come out again?
...show less
Key Stats
Review
For our journey into the tomb, we were equipped with 2 lanterns between the 3 of us and a bag with some items, the main one being the journal of an explorer who has previously explored the tomb. This was a nice touch and provided the primary clue system for the room – however, you’ll be comforted to know that additional clues are delivered by a disembodied voice...
Given the fact that it’s a dark room, it makes it quite creepy. The room is themed with stone effect and metal to give it a very tomb like feel. Although the room looks quite nice, as you start to search a lot of the stone effect is made using plastic that feels quite delicate in places – the finish wasn’t quite as high quality as other Escapologic rooms and made it feel a little less immersive.
There are a number of things you need to find to assist you with the major central puzzle in this part of the room. Once you’ve found them, there’s then a series of steps to complete the puzzle. It took us quite a while to figure out and complete it. We felt there was a lack of precision in the puzzle that made it difficult to know if you were doing the right thing. When we completed the puzzle and the amusing puzzle that followed, we crawled our way to the next part of the room.
When we entered this part of the room, there were a series of bangs from the first part of the room... our host was clearly trying to tell us we’d missed something. Given the dark, accompanied by the bangs, there were some fearful looks on the faces of my teammates so I volunteered to go back and find out what we’d missed. I headed back and still couldn’t find anything. On my return to my teammates, I had to laugh when I saw them still rooted to the same spot, huddled together looking nervous!
Getting short on time, we managed to solve the remaining few puzzles before heading into the final part of the room. It’s a fairly open space and we weren’t immediately sure what to do. After a bit of searching, we found the necessary part of the room that led us to the exit. The exit was a little bit surprising, giving a nice ending to the room.
Our host was very surprised to see us exit the room as we’d actually missed a key item needed to escape. It turns out we found an object in the room that allowed us to escape but wasn’t actually in the room for that purpose! So although we escaped, it wasn’t quite in the intended way. However, I’ll still chalk this one up as a victory and put it down to our creativity!
Ratings
The door creaks closed. In the pale light of your lantern, abandoned skeletons cast terrifying shadows on the walls. Frantically, you open your dusty satchel, praying for answers. Could this be all that remains of legendary explorer Crispin Sheppard, who mysteriously vanished all those years ago?
show more.... Rumours of an ancient curse shroud the stones of this pitch-black tomb. You're sure this is where the treasure is buried. But now you're all alone in the dark-and in the cold air of the crypt, something primeval is stirring...
Cryptic was the second Nottingham escape room to take shape in the diabolical mind of our creator! A secretive, mad genius who rarely sees the light, he delved deep into his love of the medieval, the mysterious, and classic adventure to bring you this compelling room.
Macabre, insidious, and packed with surprises, Cryptic is a room that doesn't suffer fools gladly. Take too many wrong turns as you try to puzzle out the solution to its centuries-old mystery, and your bones could be added to the gruesome ornaments littering the barely-visible flagstones...
What are the clues trying to tell you? Do the pitiful remnants of these past explorers have more to say than their empty eyes and bony mouths are letting on? You know you should heed the warnings. You know you should turn back. But now the door has slammed behind you, and the deadly gold-lust is driving you on.
Like all of our Nottingham escape rooms, Cryptic is best challenged by two or more brave questers. Join the ranks of the treasure-hunters who have passed through its grim portals. Will you take your place as one of the few who have come out again?
...show less
Key Stats
| Room Name | Cryptic |
| Venue | Escapologic |
| Location | Nottingham, UK |
| Date | 25/03/2017 |
| Escape Time | 55:00 |
| Team Size | 3 |
| My Recommended Team Size | 3 - 4 |
Review
For our journey into the tomb, we were equipped with 2 lanterns between the 3 of us and a bag with some items, the main one being the journal of an explorer who has previously explored the tomb. This was a nice touch and provided the primary clue system for the room – however, you’ll be comforted to know that additional clues are delivered by a disembodied voice...
Given the fact that it’s a dark room, it makes it quite creepy. The room is themed with stone effect and metal to give it a very tomb like feel. Although the room looks quite nice, as you start to search a lot of the stone effect is made using plastic that feels quite delicate in places – the finish wasn’t quite as high quality as other Escapologic rooms and made it feel a little less immersive.
There are a number of things you need to find to assist you with the major central puzzle in this part of the room. Once you’ve found them, there’s then a series of steps to complete the puzzle. It took us quite a while to figure out and complete it. We felt there was a lack of precision in the puzzle that made it difficult to know if you were doing the right thing. When we completed the puzzle and the amusing puzzle that followed, we crawled our way to the next part of the room.
When we entered this part of the room, there were a series of bangs from the first part of the room... our host was clearly trying to tell us we’d missed something. Given the dark, accompanied by the bangs, there were some fearful looks on the faces of my teammates so I volunteered to go back and find out what we’d missed. I headed back and still couldn’t find anything. On my return to my teammates, I had to laugh when I saw them still rooted to the same spot, huddled together looking nervous!
Getting short on time, we managed to solve the remaining few puzzles before heading into the final part of the room. It’s a fairly open space and we weren’t immediately sure what to do. After a bit of searching, we found the necessary part of the room that led us to the exit. The exit was a little bit surprising, giving a nice ending to the room.
Our host was very surprised to see us exit the room as we’d actually missed a key item needed to escape. It turns out we found an object in the room that allowed us to escape but wasn’t actually in the room for that purpose! So although we escaped, it wasn’t quite in the intended way. However, I’ll still chalk this one up as a victory and put it down to our creativity!
 |
| The team were Daniel, Becky and Beth. |
Ratings
| Overall |  | A room with a very unique layout and nice theming, but too much emphasis around one central puzzle. |
| Difficulty | | It’s a fairly logical room – it will test you, but It’s certainly not impossible. |
| Fun | | It was fun, particularly discovering all the different spaces in the game. |
| Puzzles |  | There are a number of different puzzles to get through, but there’s a heavy emphasis on one central puzzle that is a little ambiguous at times. |
| Immersion | | It’s a well themed room, but some of the theming is lower quality than other Escapologic rooms. |
| Surprises |  | Discovering the different spaces causes a few surprises and there’s a very nice ending. |