Since it was my birthday on the 1st of March, I was quite eager to do something a bit different. It took a little bit of trying to get there, but I was finally able to arrange going to an escape room with my sister, two of my niblings and a friend. I’d gone to Houdini’s Escape Rooms with my sister and Ry last year, so when we had the opportunity to go to the same company this year, I immediately went for it.

I will say that I found this escape room to be much harder than the one from last year. As I recall from the booking website, there was only a 20% chance of actually escaping the room we’d booked…but one of the key factors in booking this one was that my nephew, who’s ten, could join the game as well.

The escape room we ended up going to was Houdini’s Last Secret. We did end up making sure before entering that there would be no live actors who might jump out at us, but the room really was just puzzles we had to solve…and the only other person was the game master, who spoke to us from outside the room.

My nephew, Freddie, mentioned that, ‘We’re very good at the hard stuff, but really bad at the easy stuff!’ after we’d left the escape room…and I do have to say that he had a very good point about that. I think the biggest problem the five of us faced in the escape room was that we were massively overcomplicating the puzzles. After we’d been stuck on the first one for ten minutes, the game master very kindly offered us a hint.

I really did enjoy the look and feel of the room. I won’t go into any details, but visually, the room very much looked like it belonged to Houdini. We had a lot of opportunities to explore the puzzles that were around…and even though we had to have almost constant hints (I believe we used the maximum amount allowed), we were able to ultimately escape the room…but for our group, it was pretty tough.

I will say that I didn’t find the storyline quite as cohesive as the first game I played from Houdini’s Escape Rooms. I really liked how it was set up at the beginning, but I found how it ended a little bit confusing; which was likely due to the way it had been set up more than anything else.

I will say that there was obviously a lot of effort that went into the escape room. You probably do need someone a bit smaller for part of the escape room, though, otherwise parts of it might be tricky. If you’re considering going to this, I would definitely recommend giving it a try!