EscapeEnvelope
77 escape rooms
The Reading Witch team has hands down crafted one of the best experiences in the industry. Balancing puzzles with live elements to create a perfect flow that ranged from on-edge, to genuinely terrifying. Honestly, deconstructing it a day later just reveals how everything was such a hit. From the second that front door opened to the second it closed 2 hours later, we were immersed. The setup is brilliant in the way they weave the standard escape room rules into the experience so you don't really feel like you are getting a brief for an escape room but are being prepped for a genuine experience. And that experience had some absolutely stunning moments. The puzzles are quite varied so everyone on our team had several moments to shine, plenty of eureka moments, and a range of difficulties to control the flow of the game. A must play for anyone who is seeking the best the industry has to offer. --- MILD SPOILERS BELOW From a game design perspective the space they have, has been so well utilised you can imagine the time and effort that went into the writing stages, but the execution from their performances makes the whole thing seamless. Moving between rooms relatively often keeps things fresh and returning to a previous room always offers up a fresh dose of anxiety. As a horror game it forgoes the glut of cheap jumpscares in favour of playing on legitimate fears, or building dread that sometimes descends into a deafening silence to an immediate crescendo of absolute terror. That terror comes from the interactions with the Reading Witch herself. But I find the most impressive though is that on two occasions they break the traditional tropes of these kinds of experiences which really deepened the immersion in a way that keeps you on edge until you physically are outside the premises. I want to talk about those two things, but will do so vaguely in the next section. If you have not played the game. Stop reading here. Go play it, and only then return. --- SPOILERS AHEAD The first trope they destroyed was literally breaking down a barrier. Things in escape rooms are meant to be used again and again. So the destruction of a physical object comes as a real shock. A barrier is, usually, to keep you separate from something. So when that literal barrier was broken, the dread deepened massively because now, nothing is sacred and you feel like you can be pursued on a whole new level. The second was the ending, in the sense it doesn't end the way, you expect. I won't say how, but because of that play on expectations, you don't really know if it really is over until you are out of the building. Even your final interaction with the team is still very much tied to the game giving you this sense that you are always still "in" the experience and can't trust anything. The team have made a very bold choice with The Reading Witch, and I can only hope the love it receives from players like myself can translate into financial success. In a market growing with cash-grabbing chains, these are the kind of games we absolutely need to champion.
Gameplay
Atmosphere
Customer service
Minimum age
16
Was genuinely very scary at points!
