Cryptology Nottingham - "Dreamscape"

Updated: Mar 21

LOCATION:  Nottingham, England, United Kingdom

Photos above are property of Cryptology UK

📝 ETR DECODER

🔑 GAME: Dreamscape
📅 DATE PLAYED: August 30, 2021
🎬 GENRE: Adventure
🧠 DIFFICULTY (Based on 3 ppl): 8/10
👥 TOTAL # OF PLAYERS: 2-6 ppl
🕒 LENGTH OF TIME: 60 Mins.
💰 PRICE: £20-24/PP (pending on the group size)
☎️ BOOKING TYPE: Private
🔓 ESCAPED/ COMPLETED?: Yes

📖 THE STORY

A prominent dream doctor, Dr Lucy Dee, has been testing out the possibilities of Lucid Dreaming, and has found herself trapped inside some very real dreams of her own! Can you and your team navigate 5 of her most recent dreams and help unlock the keys hidden within them, to locate Dr Lucy and help her wake up and escape?

🎯 HIT THE BULLSEYE

Our GM Mark was dressed very - appropriately - for the game and was full of energy as he told us our mission and how everything was going to work.
You move through 5 different rooms and in each room will reveal a series of objects that you carry with you through the game in a knapsack - fans of the 80s/90s TV series "Knightmare" will be very fond of this!
Each room has plenty of puzzles to solve - our team of 3 were kept very busy both individually and together solving a variety of maths, word, physical and logical puzzles.
There are some extremely fun puzzles and some a little random, but this means there is something for everyone, from young to newbie through to ER pro.
The more puzzles you solve the more dream-keys you get. There are 20 unique keys to collect, 5 in each of the first 4 dreams/rooms, and then these can be used to make the final room easier, as they “unlock” the puzzles there meaning you have less to do to achieve your goal.
Every room is very different and the puzzles tied in well to each theme, and hints come to you over a sound or screen system within the theme.
In each of the first 4 rooms, collect an additional “pink” clue in each dream and take these with you to the end for a bonus.

🧩 MISSED THE MARK

Nothing! This experience is crazy, wacky and out-of-the-ordinary - if you embrace that and just enjoy, you will very much enjoy the experience!

🏹 TAKE A SHOT?

This isn’t a typical, search every corner for items type of room. This is solve as many puzzles as you can in the time and get rewarded for those that you do solve type of challenge. This means that even if you don’t do so well at the beginning, you still have a chance to progress to the end and “escape”!

Think of it as a Crystal Maze episode where you are all allowed to take on all the challenges in all four zones one after the other, where they open all the doors in each zone and the whole team just goes and works on all the puzzles simultaneously, obtains crystals (dreamkeys) for solving those puzzles, and then moves on to the next zone. The final zone (dream) is made easier the more puzzles you have solved, but you all get a chance to tackle it not matter how well you did.

It is worth spending about 12 minutes in each room, to maximize your chances, but you can move on if you do manage to get all 5 keys from that room earlier than that.

We collected 18 of the 20 keys and escaped in time, getting the second fastest time of any 3 person team to take on the Dreamscape!

Puzzle fans will love this one. It really is like a test of your puzzling skills as a team, and for everyone’s individual strengths. We had a Math whizz in our team who solved the number based puzzles in record time. Similarly I whizzed through the wordy ones, and together we did the logic and physical challenges.

Highly recommended for something a bit different, an immersive experience with a lot of laughs and clearly a room where the owners have thought outside the box and put a lot of time and effort into make something fantastical, varied and humorous that will have broad appeal. And they did just that!

Photos above are property of Cryptology UK

Additonal Info

Parking lots in the area (quite pricy being in the center of town), cheapest one I found was on St James Street NCP (in the open, not up the ramp) where it is £1 an hour.

BOOK NOW

(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Cryptology UK for providing a media discount for this game. Although a discount was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.