On Monday 9th May I headed to an escape room that I’ve been anticipating for a little while. Located in Crowborough in East Sussex lies Dark Master Escape Rooms and I was here to experience Into The Reliquary, their Peruvian jungle inspired escape room. Their website gives some images of what to expect in the room but these do little justice for the actual experience of this phenomenal room.
We arrived at a pretty unassuming warehouse tucked away on a small trading estate. This didn’t feel like the home to an escape room but we’ve been tricked before by assuming this. What did shine was the really cool logo for Dark Master escape room on the side, so at least we knew we were in the right place. We walked round to the entrance and were greeted by Ellie and Jane. They were so welcoming and so friendly. The reception area felt cosy and a nice place to relax before and after games. They currently offer two rooms here with two more coming soon. We signed in and we’re given the usual safety talk. We were also handed a walkie talkie and a small plastic basket to put used keys in. We were then led upstairs (and past the facade for one of their two new rooms Shamleys, which looks amazing). We entered our room and were greeted by what I can only describe as one of the most detail sets for an escape room I have ever witnessed. It was beautiful and very immersive. She turned out egg timer over and out game begin.
There will be full spoilers here so read ahead at own risk, but we can’t stress this enough, if you plan to do this room do not read on as it will spoil the surprises.
From the outset we knew this would be a hunt for the clues and gather them to complete the puzzles style escape room so we immediately got searching all around. We split into two to explore more ground. I took the tent and Tim from Scaretour took the jungle. We started to find some clues and puzzles and managed to unlock the boxes fairly easily. Then comes the first big surprise. In the room there is a water feature that resembles a river. It turns out it’s not just for decoration as one of the boxes contains an inflate rubber dinghy that you have to blow up and use to explore the river cave. Obviously, you can get wet in this room as well as covered in sand so bring a change of clothes. Tim went through the cave first and found a key attached to the wall and assumed we needed another key to unlock it so came back. I then went in and explored, and almost sunk the boat a few times. I came back out and we were then told we didn’t need a key, so I sent Tim back in as I was knackered lol. We got the key and opened the temple.
The temple started off really simple but then you open up a crawl space which contained other puzzles. We eventually managed to open the last gate. We were greeted by a rope ladder. We descended into the tombs lower level. There was so much sand in this room. The puzzles in this last room are very easy but there is something you need to do. I can’t believe I’m about to say this, you need to get the touchy wall puzzle wrong. Trust me. Something amazing happens when’s you get it wrong and it’s worth experiencing once. I won’t tell you what as you need some surprises, but it’s brilliant.
We managed to escape in 47 minutes and 42 seconds and at the time we had set the record for the fastest of the month, though this may be broken now. It was honestly the most fun I’ve had in an escape room for a while and never at any point actually felt like I was playing an escape room. It felt more like an immersive experience than a room and I loved it. Thank you so much to Dark Master for hosting us and I will be back soon to play One Wing Airlines and the other rooms when they open.
You can find out more about Dark Master Escape Rooms as well as booking your experience on the Dark Master Website.
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