With a last minute visit to Lincoln on the cards it was a quick browse of Escape the Review to find a room and we immediately found Project Mayhem. We love a good scare and we love a good escape room and this was ticking all the boxes from us. We arrived and were greeted by our awesome host Dean. He explained the story of the room we were about to play, the usual health and safety and explained that there would also be a live actor. If we heard an alarm we had to hide. I've played a couple of rooms with a live actor in so I thought I knew what we were in for. I was wrong. He asked us to pick one person from our group to be taken. I nominated myself and I was taken away.
Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead!
I will try to keep it spoiler free but there may be accidental spoilers, so apologies in advance. Our game started when the other three guys were let into their area of the game. After about 2 minutes all I heard was some screams and smashing of a chain. The actor was about. I was then told to take my blindfold off. We had to work as a team to unlock me and then escape the rest of the room.
The puzzles throughout the room aren't the hardest. Like with most horror games with live actors it's more about the experience as opposed to the puzzles. They are meant more as a distraction from the scares and this room really played on this idea and took it one step further with the alarm as you really didn't know when that alarm was going to sound. It made solving puzzles feel like it had this urgency as you wanted to solve it before you had to hide in case you forgot what the answer was.
There are some really great scares throughout the room and they come in different ways. From the atmosphere building by having to stay quiet to full on jump scares, it was very mixed and very enjoyable. It got the heart pumping and the screams. There are three main scares that really stand out from our game that I keep chuckling about. The game builds up and builds up to a finale that is both stressful and scary in equal measure. I have never wanted to find a key so badly.
We managed to escape the room. I don't remember our time but it was quite quick yet we had a full experience from start to finish so we weren't mad that we escaped quickly. If you love scary and you love escape rooms than I can not recommend this room enough. It was an absolute pleasure playing Fear. It was the perfect blend of scary and fun and I can't wait to go back to play Mary and Jangle's Carnival.
For more information and to book tickets you can visit the Project Mayhem website.