Timetrap – Imaginarium 1863 – 8/10
Played May 2021
Reading, Berkshire
Professor Potch has made a mistake with his calculations on a previous mission. It was only small but the shift in time has resulted in a terrible incident further in the future…
In 1863, Professor Potch’s favourite author, Lewis Carroll, has been caught up in a horse and cart accident in Bucklebury market, and is now in hospital suffering from a head injury that has caused some funny goings-on, most dreadfully, memory loss! And the worst part – Lewis Carroll had just begun writing his masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which Professor Potch now fears will never be published!
To make up for his mistake, Potch has been working day and night to develop a new machine, and is now looking for volunteers, not only to go back in time through his time warp, but to be shrunk down and sent deep into Lewis Carroll’s brain to put things right!
As always, the time warp can only stay stable for one hour, so you must complete your task and escape within this time.
We had the same host as Pudding Lane, Chrissie. She continued to be friendly and engaging for the second room and let us go straight in after giving us the story overview.
We’ve played a few rooms that use Alice in Wonderland as the theme, and it was a pleasant surprise to find this story and theme put a twist on the whole thing.
There were a number of unique puzzles that made for an interesting room. The puzzles flowed really well into the different parts of the story and completely suited the theme. They started out linear, but then developed nicely into multiple puzzles being available at the same time. This was a ‘clueless’ room for us but certainly was challenging and we could have easily been caught out.
We played as a 4 and we’d say that as enthusiasts that is a comfortable number but for newbies you could certainly play with a couple more people.
After, we decamped to another one of our favoured Brewdog bars close by for a celebratory beer and to discuss the room and the obvious things we missed!
Theme/immersion – 8
Puzzles – 8
Fun Factor – 8
Difficulty – 7
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Reviewed by R and E