After taking on and succeeding with the sublime Abducted, we soon found ourselves looking for the other rooms The Great Escape Game provided, especially the scary ones. So we sat in the car and booked for the next day(Thursday 3rd February) and the first on the list was The Devils Playground, Supposedly an easier game but still with its challenges so it seemed the perfect place to start our next journey. We were met once again with the same warm welcome by Lee who we were happy to see again. Sat back in the now-familiar bar we awaited our games master. A glass of coke later and we were joined with Beth, A cheery host with great energy, she introduced the usual safety spiel and walked us through some of the locks we were likely to face, Mainly combination locks and the infamous directional lock(eurggghh) more on that later, our final warning is beware the Devil for he lies...a lot, this was a fun addition however it did seem to feel a bit "hand leading" or so it seemed at first. A short wait later and it was time to "Go to HELL!".
Potential spoilers ahead-Read at your own risk
The Devils Playground is one of the smaller games that this fantastic company offers but do not be put off for there is plenty to do during your time in the lower realm. Your first challenge will be to get down to Hell itself and this provided a fun way to start the game. Once you have solved the first few puzzles you find yourself in the titular Devils Playground and Wow is this small set beautiful. A dark cave scene adorned with skulls, pentacles, candles and a giant demonic "fireplace" if you could call it that.
And if you are lucky you might even come across a scare or two. The crux of the Devils Playground is simple, We have found ourselves in Hell and it is beautiful just saying. And we have to beat the Devil at his own game. The Devils Playground features a good selection of puzzles, some quite easy, others that will leave you scratching your head but hopefully not too long wasting your time, Directional lock I'm looking at you, this is one of the truly sinful puzzles that caused the most stress as directional locks mostly do, However, the reason behind it and this puzzle it was contained to was a lot of fun to complete. We especially liked how all the puzzles were not contained to the one-room causing us to go back and forth between our starting area and the Devils waiting area. Just like Abducted this game from a design point of view is practically flawless and to be honest, the only issue we had is not really the rooms fault but rather that one lock itself but then again that could have been our fault too, everything else was perfect. Even the "extra challenges" the Devil might have placed were fun and well thought out and added a little sense of trepidation. Another thing we liked was that every time we had solved a puzzle there was a small audio payoff which really kept our group spurred on to push forward. The final puzzle we honestly made more complicated than it needed to be but the way it was laid out was fantastic. Final puzzle complete we escaped with a time of 54:23, yes we cut it close but the Devil is devious and didn't make our job easy, he did however make a challenge that was practically a fast fun paced race from start to finish and for that, we commend him...just not with our souls.
Game one complete of our two booked it was time for a small break before heading into our next scary escape "RUN" but that is for another review later... Two games completed and we are still being blown away by the pure high standard of these amazing games and the staff that run them.
If you wish to book The Great Escape Games-Sheffield you can do so at this link
Until next time PSG Signing out.
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