Crawley is infamous among scare enthusiats for one reason, Shocktoberfest, but it appears to have more going for it than I first thought. Enter Hounds Escape Room. Located in the heart of Crawley town centre this escape room company is fairly new to the scene but everywhere is giving it rave reviews, so of course we had to go and check it out for ourselves. We booked both their rooms for the same day and up first was Questionable Ethics.
Climbing the stairs we were greeted by the wonderful David. He was extremely welcoming and friendly. He gave us the health and safety speech and we weere then introduced to our host and games master whose name does escape me. Straight from the get go he was in character and provided us with some hilarious moments and I think he immediately sussed out that he could take the piss out of us and he did. He explained that he worked for a secret government facility and he was hired to kidnap, no, collect test subjects for an experiment. He explains that he doesn't feel comfortable doing this anymore and wants our help to expose the truth. He showed us in and explained a little more before telling us to watch the screen. We watched a little briefing and then a countdown started, 3, 2, 1. Our game had begun and i also realised that more escape rooms need this countdown as it was weirdly encouraging.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD
The first room is simple in its design but it worked for the story. You are in a testing room and the puzzles you have to solve are the perfect start to the game. It uses different styles of puzzles to 'test' you and when each one is complete you will be able to unlock the cabinet and proceed to the next. Its a very linear game and it just works really well. The games master will also talk through the PA system to make sarcastic remarks as you're playing and it just added to the game. After completeing the tests we unlocked the passageway to the office and the story just kept building. The office had a lot of interesting puzzles which started to increase in difficulty plus a puzzle that i've not seen anywhere else. It was a silly one but it didn't feel out of place and just added to the humour side of things. None of the puzzles felt out of place for the theme or felt like they were there to just fill a gap throughout the entire experience. There is a puzzle that does require a lot of fingers so be prepared for a stretch if its just two of you ut it is solvable. The whole room has a great diversity in puzzles and there is always something to do and its great that some of the puzzles also needed team work to solve them. We eventually unlocked the last room which was dark and loud and it gave of this urgency vibe that we needed to get out quick. We had to unlock the cage for freedom. We solved the last remaining puzzles in this room and we managed to escape with 12:45 left on the clock.
Questionable Ethics was a superb room with so much to love and so it was obvious that so much love had been put into it. It got everything right and just worked and was everything we were led to believe it would be and more. We can not thank the team enough for creating such a wonderfully immersive and fun room. If you ever find yourself looking for a escape room in the Crawley area than we can't recommend Hounds enough. It was amazing!
For more information and to book you can visit the Hounds Escape website.