Breakout Chester - "Excalibur"

Updated: Mar 20

LOCATION:  Chester, United Kingdom

Photo above is property of Breakout Chester

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: Excalibur
📅 DATE PLAYED: July 15, 2022
🎬 GENRE: Fantasy, Medieval
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 2 ppl): 6/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-5 ppl
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 60 Mins.
💰 PRICE: £15-20/PP (Weekdays), £17-22/PP (Weekends)
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes (50Min, 2 Hints)

📖 THE STORY

Your team are members of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, but have been kidnapped and thrown in a dungeon. Now, a group of imposter knights pretending to be you have stolen your posts, and it’s up to you to break free and prove your identities in the only way an heir of Uther Pendragon knows how: by pulling Excalibur from its stone.

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

The dungeon escape at the beginning involves several puzzle elements that are wonderfully tactile and feel straight out of a heist movie. Very fun!
Puzzle elements and decor are imaginative, match the narrative’s era, and clearly took some very clever design to pull off.
I’m a sucker for costumes in escape rooms as a fun way to elevate your victory picture, and this one has chain mail and swords!

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

The Round Table element, while incredibly clever, showed some significant wear when we visited, and I was worried we might break it if we weren’t careful.
One puzzle involving placing swords in slots created a significant tripping hazard. While there are signs warning players of this, it’s easy to forget the danger in the excitement of completing the room, so my partner tripped twice before we had finished.
The placement of one clue was a little obscure.

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

The best escape rooms are those that deliver on the fantasy of their premise not only through decor and set design, but also through the story told by the puzzles themselves. Featuring a delightfully tactile dungeon escape sequence, an impressively complex rotating Round Table puzzle, and the ultimate satisfaction of drawing the fabled sword from its stone, Excalibur is a room sure to be memorable, even amongst the other excellent experiences available at Breakout Chester.

That said, the room isn’t perfect, and the couple critiques I have hold it back a little from being one of my favorites at Breakout Chester. My team was frustrated for some time as a result of an out-of-the-way clue we had missed (don’t be shy about hints, kids!), but my biggest complaint is about the room’s most ambitious element: the Round Table puzzle. Clearly a feat of careful engineering, this mechanical showstopper is very impressive and fun in concept, but it’s clear that the hundreds of groups who have come through this room have taken their toll on the table. This–along with the trip hazard created by the puzzle’s completion–somewhat lessened my enjoyment of the latter half of the Excalibur experience, though the game’s finale patched this up with a sword-pulling conclusion that delivered on a long-held fantasy of mine.

While this room may have a couple literal rough edges, my team still had a great time with it, and some of the puzzles therein were among the most satisfying to complete from Breakout Chester’s suite of high-quality rooms. Excalibur is a great example of the storytelling fun made possible by good escape room design. It is an experience I recommend to veterans and newcomers alike… though perhaps wear shin guards if you have them.

ℹ️ ADDITIONAL INFO

Because it is in a historic building, Breakout Chester is not handicap accessible. Players need to climb multiple staircases before they reach any of the rooms.
This is in a car-free part of the city, so you will probably have to walk a couple blocks from the nearest parking lot or bus station.
Employees on an intercom need to buzz you into the front door and want you to arrive five to ten minutes ahead of your game (but not earlier) so they can spread out guests for health reasons. Plan accordingly!
"Excalibur" is located up several flights of stairs.