On October 23rd, The Epix Team went to Breakout Manchester, and participated in their competitive four star room(s), Reclassified.
How this escape room worked is that two groups go into two different rooms, that are connected by a two-way mirror window. All of the tasks and challenges to find the clues and escape are the same, although some key words may vary.
As we had to split up, it was decided that the two apprentices would decide on who went in which room, A coin was flipped and it was decided that James would have a total group number of five that went into the green room, and willow and her team of four went into the blue room.
The accounts of what happened in the hour to escape according to the two team leaders are as follows.
James – How to lose honestly
When it came to choosing my team I finely tuned the members I chose based on least likely to argue and block progress. On my team I had Steve, Ruth, Tim and Zahir.
We got off to a great start by firing through many of the challenges and racing ahead of the opposition. It wasn’t until we got around half way through when we hit a wall, everything we could think of had been done or tried yet we had only a few unrelated and nondescript clues at our disposal.
After 10 minutes of manically rooting and brainstorming we noticed a clue, unfortunately using the new found clue did nothing… As I resumed pacing up and down again I peered into the oppositions room, where I spotted the next clue, bingo! This one was the correct and allowed us to continue towards the finish.
As we reached the final challenge we heard a lot of commotion from the opposition, that was them finishing 5 minutes before us. We managed to enter the door code and escape with only 30 seconds left.
None of us left feeling defeated, as after all its the taking part that counts!
Time remaining when escaped: 30 Seconds
Willow – How to win (by cheating)
When picking teams, I went for Chris, Mike and Ian. Although some would argue that having Mike and Ian on the same team would only cause arguing, I know based off of past events that its usually in a productive manner. As well, Chris mentioned on the walk in that he has participated in multiple escape rooms before, so I knew he would be quite the vital player.
When we entered the room, and was going through some of the safety information, we were introduced to a system that they had set up, where every time the other team completed one of the primary challenges, a light would turn on.
As if the game wasn’t competitive enough already!
As the game started, the other team had a few lights turned on almost straight away, but we caught up, and it was pretty neck-and-neck throughout the remainder of the game. One of the challenges involved turning on a light in the other room, which we realised, even after you solved the main problem, you could still continue to turn the light on. So, every couple of minutes, when we realised we could turn it on we would run over and press the button, to both confuse and distract them.
The light that turned on would allow you to see through the mirror on the room, and at one point, this allowed Ian realised that James was peering through the mirror, so he attempted to scare James by standing straight in front of the cloudy mirror. Based off of James’s reaction, I believe he succeeded.
When it came to the last ten minutes of the game, both my team and James’s team only had one light left to turn on, it was a race at this point to get out first. We managed to fix the last puzzle, and work out what to do to exit the door. It was quite amazing as we sat there, and was told an escape from the other room was unlikely, though with only a few seconds left, the loud cheer that erupted from the green room informed them that they had done it. I don’t think I will ever forget the joyful reaction from James that faded to a annoyed one, when he realised that we were sat there smug, and happy with our escape that smashed their escape time.
For my first time in an escape room, as well as my first team building exercise with Epix, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Time remaining when escaped: 5 Minutes 36 seconds
