Riddlr is one of the newest escape room businesses to join the party in Bristol. Opening in November 2017, they've had several thousand puzzle adventurers through their doors to try and escape what lies ahead. Run by Justin & Tom, the pair have created several rooms to keep pushing the boundaries of escape rooms and show they are strong contenders in the industry.
While speaking to the creators, they mention how they use a mixture of puzzles using technology, immersive effects and detailed story lines to keep a completed, fully immersive experience like no other. They have several themed rooms at there location including Zombie Apocalypse, The Brunel Enigma and now the latest horror experience, Seance!
Seance is designed to be a frightening experience and contains religious imagery and iconography which some may find offense. It also contains effects such as flashing lights and loud noises which may effect some guests. This is also not the first escape room in Bristol with is aimed towards the scare market. Hell In A Cell and Poltergeist at Puzzlair both use a dark and scary theme and we wondered how it would compare and stand out.
The story is is based on an investigator Clarissa Stubbs who disappeared last year while exploring an abandoned house known for paranormal activity. Can you investigate what happened and escape 13 paper street or will you join the forgotten souls who were foolish enough to venture within and perform a Seance?
As with any escape room, we don't go want to go into much detail in what the escape room entails and the puzzles used as we believe you should visit and find out yourself. However, the room is very well themed all around and not one bit of furniture looks out of place. A sneak peak video was released by Riddlr and you can find that below.
On top of this, they use a very unique way in all of their escape rooms to keep it fully immersive from the outside well. They don't use radios, live screens or phones to get in touch for clues from your game host, they use technology featured pieces that link with the theme and story of the escape to help you out. For example, in our escape room Seance, they have a mystical mirror on the wall which calls for Clarissa Stubbs to give us hints on certain puzzles by a press of a button.
The use of technology is so heavily featured in this escape room which we think is an amazing step and development for escape rooms. They also used classic padlocks with codes and keys through-out which keeps it back to the classic style. However, during our escape we sadly encountered a small technical issue (which sometimes cannot be helped), but this was solved very quickly by the owners and with the escape room being as new as it is, we couldn't really fault them on this hiccup.
What really makes this room is how scary it actually is. The spookiness and suspense really gets to you during the whole 60 minutes experience and makes the simplest of tasks 10x harder than they should be. From the creepy dolls, flickering lights to the pyrotechnics used (very cleverly), we were screaming, jumping and struggled with basic, quick puzzles like we normally do.
Overall, we believe this heavily technology based escape room is one of the scariest we've ever experienced. It includes a great range of puzzles mixed with the horror and jump scares you'd expect from a horror experience or maze. They use effects so cleverly that it's not tacky or cheesy and they really don't lie about it being scary!
If you want to visit what we think is one of the scariest experiences open all year round in the UK, you can find more details on the Riddlr website below. We managed to escape just in time but will you?
