BREAKOUT Manchester: the Sabotage Room

You may have read my previous post about BREAKOUT Manchester – the real life escape game where we played the John Monroe room and successfully escaped. Well following that post I was contacted by the team to come back and try out their newly opened new room – Sabotage.

The image below explains the Breakout concept in a nutshell. Using mainly the power of your mind the aim is to solve the puzzles in the room to complete a specific task, which will “win” you the game and enable you to escape the room. Following the opening of Sabotage they now have 4 rooms to choose from, and each has a different story and setting. The John Monroe room is a detective’s office and the aim is to identify his murderer. Sabotage on the other hand has an exciting military theme.

Sabotage is set behind enemy lines in a Russian control centre, where your team is sent to break into the control room via the guards’ staff room and stop the launch of a missile directed at Manchester and set to deploy in 60 minutes! Like last time the game was really fun to play, with loads of codes to find/crack and puzzles to solve, a TV screen where the person running the game can display tips if you’re going off-track, and an enjoyable level of panic and mania as the clock ticks down. It’s definitely worth going with 3 or 4 people as every person counts in an emergency (plus it’s more fun).

The attention to detail in the rooms is really great and there’s a believable setting built around the puzzles so after a while it really does feel like you’re in the story. I could tell that the Sabotage game room was harder than John Monroe (lateral thinking puzzles against the clock are almost impossible!), but thankfully we still managed to escape within the hour with 2 minutes to spare and I actually think it was even more fun because we were more rushed for time and more panicked. It’s such a fun hour, and I was a bit giddy for quite a while afterwards!