Located in Shoreditch is Escape Plan, a World War 2 themed escape room company. They have three rooms in total all themed against the WW2 backdrop. This was my first time here so of course we start with the only room their website doesn't recommend for starters, The Battle For Britain. I knew absolutely nothing about the room when we arrived, and again this room was played after ScareCON so the brain was tired, even more so after also playing cq Origenes at Cluequest, but I went in with hope and a willing to escape. Turns out, you don't really escape this room.
We were a group of three for this and I was joined yet again by Tim from Scaretour and this time Ash from Scare Directory came to play. We were greeted by our lovel host whose name completely escapes me (Sorry). He was lovely and really enthusiastic and passionate about the rooms. He took us down stairs and showed us a slide show explaining the story for our room.
"The day is 18th August 1940 and the Luftwaffe have launched a resurgent attack on Britain, where your air base has been hit by the first wave of heavy bombing. As the only survivors, you must access the strategic ops room and mobilise the full force of the RAF to save Britain. But with a second attack imminent, can you also save yourselves?"
Potential Spoilers Ahead
He then told us to enter our room and we were greet by a back alley. Our first job was to gain access o the ops room. We started searching through the room and solving the puzzles one after the other to gain access. It was a very slow start for us as we certainly weren't on our A game but we soon found our feet and unlocked the door and gained access to the ops room. In this second room you are greeted by a huge table with a map of airbases on it and other things. Our mission was now to save Britains from the impending attack. This required us to solve puzzles to find out where to put the RAF.
Our group tried to split off and each work on individual puzzles and we started to find out where to place the planes. The puzzles are great and there is a real mix of different styles of puzzles that are all nicely themed to room. If I weren't so tired a the time I might have given them more love and attention than I actually did but on reflection the more I think about them the more I fall in love with them. Thy were just so clever and so much fun. Its really hard to talk about the puzzles without giving away anything so that's all you are getting.
Time was running out for our group. we still had a plane to place and 1 minute left on the clock. We placed the last plane on the table, not sure if it was in the right place, flipped the switches and it was time for the battle. What ensued was probably the most intense nerve wrecking experience I have ever felt in an escape room. Waiting and watching as the lights tell you what your result is. Honestly, my stomach was in knots. But how did we do? Did we save Britain?
We 'escaped' the room like 10 secnds left on the clock and out of the 71 planes we scored 70 out of 71. It was the last rushed puzzle that ruined it for us. 70-71 is the highest target that anyone could aim for and as such we feel really proud that we managed to get it in our tired state. Escape Plan's The Battle For Britains room is a fun yet horribly tense room with a wonderful ending, great mix of puzzles and some awesome themeing and I know I will definitely be back to experience their other two rooms soon.
For more information and to book your experience you can visit the Escape Plan website.