Disclaimer: I was sent Epic Escapes: Escape Room in a Box (3 in 1) to review free of charge, but words and pictures are mine. This post contains affiliate links, see more information here.
During lockdown, I have spent a lot of time playing escape room puzzle games. From board-game style experiences played in my living room to online rooms with friends via Zoom meetings, I’d say I’ve probably trialled at least ten different types of at-home escape rooms so far. Maybe I’ll do a round up at some point – do leave a comment if this is something you’d like to see.
Some I’ve found to be quite formulaic and simple, others have been really testing- it’s tricky to get the right balance between challenging and just bloody impossible, but this free online escape room was one of my favourites. It took ages and was extremely frustrating in places but we persevered, and the relief (and smugness) when we finally cracked it was immense! Have a go (but don’t ask me for clues, they’re long forgotten).
3-in-1 Escape Room in a Box from Epic Escapes
When contacted by Epic Escapes, I was very keen to try out their ‘Escape Room in a Box’ as it sounded a little different to the escape rooms that I’d tried. The escape rooms are designed to do at home but mimic physical escape rooms; there are padlocks which must be opened, and clues to find scattered about the room, as well as puzzles to solve.
The Escape Room in a Box contains everything you need to host three escape rooms suitable for three to six players. This includes heavy duty padlocks, UV light, clue boxes, and three folders containing the clues required to play each game – so it’s a surprisingly large and heavy box.
In the folders you will find an easy escape room (Crime) to get you started, and then two more difficult rooms, Hijack (hard) and Piracy (intermediate).
The most important thing to note is that unlike other boxed play-at-home escape room games I’ve played, each game requires a ‘host’ to set the room up before you can play.
Setting up involves following a few pages of instructions, which tell you how to set the padlock codes and where to hide clues. It doesn’t take very long; it took less than 15 minutes to set up the ‘Crime’ escape room. It does however mean that the host can’t really be involved in the game itself, save for helping if they have managed not to peek at the clues before hiding them, but they will know the unlock codes.
Although you could, technically, do the escape room in a socially distanced manner in a garden, due to the need to hide clues it’s probably better suited to an indoor room and it might be something to save for when indoor gatherings are allowed.
We played the first escape room, Crime, as a test to see what they were like but have saved the other two rooms for when we can have a bigger group (it is suggested that up to six people can play) as I think more people would definitely add to the fun.
Crime Escape Room (Warning: May contain spoilers!)
The Crime Escape Room is the easiest of the three rooms, each of which is supposed to take one hour.
We solved this one in around half that time, but we are super competitive and very experienced in puzzle games, and I have to say that the clues weren’t remarkably well hidden… In a larger room it could take a lot longer.
The background to the game tells you the following:
“You’re house-sitting for a friend who has gone away to Italy. All was going well, until some people started angrily banging on the door in the middle of the night. It turns out your friend is part of some kind of crime syndicate and owes these people money.
Fortunately, you’ve found your way into your friend’s panic room. However, you’ve now locked yourself in and cannot get out or make contact with the police. The gangsters have left, but you only have one hour of oxygen left in the secured panic room. You need to figure out how to escape the room and get help!
You must work out what’s going on and why your friend has a panic room in order to figure out how to escape the room to save yourselves…”
The clues hidden around the room will give you the codes you need to unlock the padlocks and open up the three hidden clue boxes, which contain invoices – however the invoices aren’t as they seem and are obviously faked.
When you figure out the code which connects the invoices, you can escape the room.
There are a couple of red herrings thrown in on the clues which I liked; not everything you find is relevant. However you will need all the clues and all the pieces in some way or another in order to find all three invoices.
The padlocks are all heavy duty, real padlocks and so there’s no cheating here! If you become really stuck, there are ‘hint cards’ in an envelope, which explain the steps you need to go through to solve the room.
When you’ve worked out the answer, and solved the final clue, you will have the code needed to open up the big padlock which stops you from exiting the room (not really, that would be a safety hazard, obviously).
It was a good fun game, pitched at about the right level with a few different types of clues to solve – I can’t wait to trial the harder rooms with a bigger group of people!
How much and where to buy
Epic Escapes’ ‘3 in 1 Escape Room in a Box‘ base kit can be purchased from their website, and costs £99 for three games, however you can currently get 20% off by signing up to their newsletter. All orders are covered by their 100 Day Satisfaction Guarantee.
There will soon be expansion packs available to buy which means you can use the kit to do more escape rooms, and these will cost £29 per pack. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for these!
Win a three-in-one Escape Room in a Box from Epic Escapes
You can WIN your very own 3-in-1 Escape Room in a Box from Epic Escapes by entering our competition below! UK only.