Sherlock: The Game is Now Escape room

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may have noticed that the current escape room trend has passed me by.  They are everywhere these days, with various themes and levels of quality but they’ve never appealed to me enough to try one out.  Many escape rooms seem to be based on finding items rather than using logic and deduction and I wanted to try something that would be a real challenge.  Well along comes The Game is Now, an escape room based on the mental side of escape rooms with puzzles, logic and deduction galore, and who better to be the focus of such an escape room then the king of all things puzzle and logic, Sherlock Holmes which exactly what you get with Sherlock: The Game is Now.

There are many escape rooms around based on books or TV shows, the big difference with this one based around the TV show Sherlock is that it is all 100% official and created by the same people of the TV show. This means that the quality is really high and not only that but the actors from the show appear throughout too (and yes all your favourites are here including Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Mark Gatiss and Andrew Scott).  The sets throughout are absolutely incredible, it’s just like you are walking right into the world of the TV show. It’s always hard with things like this to explain the concept without giving too much away, but here’s just some of what you can expect.  You enter via the Doyle Opticians in Shepherds Bush, which is such a convincing store looking storefront that I thought it was a completely separate business and assume the people in there were in training…well as it turns out they sort of were!

When you enter the opticians you will be met by Stamford who will prepare you for your “group eye test”.  Soon you will be brought into the back of the shop where you find out there is no test at all and in fact your group has actually been invited to become part of The Network, an international spy group!  Somehow of course if all goes wrong, your training is abandoned and you are thrown straight into solving your first case!I won’t give much more away but from here but expect to have your mental agility tested as you try to match your wits against the infamous Moriarty, back from beyond the grave to mess with Sherlock once more and by chance, you.  This is a multi-room experience and it isn’t easy but we made it with just seconds to spare!The production values really set this apart from your average escape room, the sets are all really elaborate and the addition of the actors from the show really make it a cut above.  The puzzles themselves are complex yet totally accessible for everyone and there are hints throughout if you get stuck.  At the end, you even get a debrief and evaluation with the team before you are let out into The Mindpalace, a Sherlock-themed bar.This was a ton of fun and I would love to do it again if they do a round two challenge!  Tickets cost £54 per person and are available form  The Game is Now.