Room Story - from Locked In Edinburgh
Delve into the depths of modern day Summerhall, a cultural center for arts and alcohol lovers alike! We’ve partnered up with our neighbours at Pickering’s Gin to create a challenging and immersive experience- Locked in the Distillery.
Your mission here is to uncover the identity of the disgruntled employee plotting against the Distillery, find out what they’re up to, save yourself and save the gin!
Key Stats
Review
On day two of our Edinburgh trip we headed to Locked In Edinburgh to play two of their games. We’d heard really great things about The Secret Lab, but since we were there, we also decided to play The Distillery as well. We’re really glad we did as it was actually our favourite game of the four we played on our weekend away.
Locked In is in a great location, it’s in a former veterinary school on the outskirts of the city centre that has been turned into a mixed arts venue. Lots of the buildings original features have been retained and integrated into their rooms which makes for some very interesting theming. The escape room is tucked in a corner at the far right of the buildings courtyard so it’s not the easiest to find, but thankfully Locked In had a great little video on their website showing you how to reach the entrance.
Once we were in the venue, we walked down a very hospital-esque corridor to reach the room. After a great briefing from our host where we received our mission - find the gin thief and locate the distillery owner’s secret hiding location for his gin.
The theming in this room is excellent as real gin distilling equipment has been borrowed from the gin distillery next door, giving the room a very realistic feel. The first part of the game is focused on finding the gin thief which leads to a comical hunt for clues to establish which employee is responsible. The game throws a lot of information at you, but it’s all delivered in a really manageable way. Sometimes in rooms you can end up with an overwhelming amount of information and no way to organise it, but my organised mind loved some of the additions to the room to help you manage your mounting pile of evidence. The puzzles in this room were largely based around observation and padlocks which fit well with the theme and story.
When you’ve discovered the mysterious thief, you’ve then got the task of discovering where the distillery’s owner has stashed all his gin for safe keeping. The same great theming and observational puzzles continue through this next phase of the game with some great multi-part puzzles to lead you to the answers. We really loved the method of discovering the hidden location of the gin. The easy way would have been for them to hide a scrap of paper with the location somewhere in the room, but instead they used a puzzle that required some genuine investigation that felt somewhat realistic and very logical.
With the hidden location found, we headed to complete the final puzzle. We were faced with a surprising, humorous and fast-paced ending to the game that again employed a surprising level of realism. Once we’d completed the puzzle, we dashed for the exit with a great feeling of accomplishment.
We loved The Distillery, there was something about the game that really drew us in and suited our preferred style of puzzling. It’s really odd, but we’ve found on a few occasions that some rooms just “click” with you and you quickly grasp exactly what you need to do and fly through the puzzles with little help – this was one of those games for us. It’s got good theming, good puzzles and some very realistic feeling detection methods to help you reach the required answers. There were a couple of big moments in the game that we really enjoyed, upping the pace and tension. All in all, a highly recommended game for beginners and enthusiasts alike.
Ratings
Delve into the depths of modern day Summerhall, a cultural center for arts and alcohol lovers alike! We’ve partnered up with our neighbours at Pickering’s Gin to create a challenging and immersive experience- Locked in the Distillery.
Your mission here is to uncover the identity of the disgruntled employee plotting against the Distillery, find out what they’re up to, save yourself and save the gin!
Key Stats
| Room Name | The Distillery |
| Venue | Locked In |
| Location | Edinburgh, UK |
| Date | 29/07/2018 |
| Escape Time | 43:22 |
| Team Size | 3 |
| My Recommended Team Size | 3 - 5 |
Review
On day two of our Edinburgh trip we headed to Locked In Edinburgh to play two of their games. We’d heard really great things about The Secret Lab, but since we were there, we also decided to play The Distillery as well. We’re really glad we did as it was actually our favourite game of the four we played on our weekend away.
Locked In is in a great location, it’s in a former veterinary school on the outskirts of the city centre that has been turned into a mixed arts venue. Lots of the buildings original features have been retained and integrated into their rooms which makes for some very interesting theming. The escape room is tucked in a corner at the far right of the buildings courtyard so it’s not the easiest to find, but thankfully Locked In had a great little video on their website showing you how to reach the entrance.
Once we were in the venue, we walked down a very hospital-esque corridor to reach the room. After a great briefing from our host where we received our mission - find the gin thief and locate the distillery owner’s secret hiding location for his gin.
The theming in this room is excellent as real gin distilling equipment has been borrowed from the gin distillery next door, giving the room a very realistic feel. The first part of the game is focused on finding the gin thief which leads to a comical hunt for clues to establish which employee is responsible. The game throws a lot of information at you, but it’s all delivered in a really manageable way. Sometimes in rooms you can end up with an overwhelming amount of information and no way to organise it, but my organised mind loved some of the additions to the room to help you manage your mounting pile of evidence. The puzzles in this room were largely based around observation and padlocks which fit well with the theme and story.
When you’ve discovered the mysterious thief, you’ve then got the task of discovering where the distillery’s owner has stashed all his gin for safe keeping. The same great theming and observational puzzles continue through this next phase of the game with some great multi-part puzzles to lead you to the answers. We really loved the method of discovering the hidden location of the gin. The easy way would have been for them to hide a scrap of paper with the location somewhere in the room, but instead they used a puzzle that required some genuine investigation that felt somewhat realistic and very logical.
With the hidden location found, we headed to complete the final puzzle. We were faced with a surprising, humorous and fast-paced ending to the game that again employed a surprising level of realism. Once we’d completed the puzzle, we dashed for the exit with a great feeling of accomplishment.
We loved The Distillery, there was something about the game that really drew us in and suited our preferred style of puzzling. It’s really odd, but we’ve found on a few occasions that some rooms just “click” with you and you quickly grasp exactly what you need to do and fly through the puzzles with little help – this was one of those games for us. It’s got good theming, good puzzles and some very realistic feeling detection methods to help you reach the required answers. There were a couple of big moments in the game that we really enjoyed, upping the pace and tension. All in all, a highly recommended game for beginners and enthusiasts alike.
 |
| The team were Becky, Beth and Daniel. |
Ratings
| Overall |  | A good humoured “whodunnit” style game with great theming and some really fun puzzles. |
| Difficulty |  | There’s plenty to get through in the hour, but it’s all extremely logical with great flow between puzzles. |
| Fun | | We had so much fun in this room. There’s lots of humour in the room and satisfying moments of discovery. |
| Puzzles | | The majority of the puzzles in this room are observation and problem solving based, but there’s a really great variety. |
| Immersion |  | The room is very well themed with genuine gin making equipment borrowed from the real-life distillery next door. |
| Surprises | | This game has quite a number of surprising moments, one that leaves you in a mad dash! |