Room Escape Artist

Phantom Peak is one of the best escape room-type experiences in London, England. Here are our recommendations for other great escape rooms in London.

Phantom Peak’s Summer’s Peak was joyful, addictive, and thoroughly overrun with platypuses.

The magic of Phantom Peak stems from it being a living, breathing world filled with multidimensional inhabitants, regularly changing content, and compelling yet not overwhelming through-lines. There’s enough to mull over to sustain multiple return visits per season and an active fan Discord server. And yet, these plot lines and lore aren’t prerequisite for the casual one-time visitor to quickly learn how to navigate the world and have a full experience (albeit one that may well leave them wanting more!)

I had the pleasure of attending Phantom Peak’s Summer’s Peak season in August 2023. With limited time in London, I packed 2 shows into a single day: the first with fellow REA writer Theresa Wagner, and the second solo. The Summer’s Peak season featured 10 trails and 1 bonus trail, and with some scrambling in my second session, I was able to complete all trails.

Having so far only attended this one season of Phantom Peak, my reaction includes observations specific to Summer’s Peak, yet not necessarily in direct contrast to Wintermas or any other Phantom Peak season. For a more in-depth analysis of Phantom Peak, check out David’s full review of Phantom Peak: Wintermas.

A Paddle of Platypuses

David’s review includes a brief mention of platypus fishing, a whimsical tradition that still persists.

Since then, Phantom Peak has been properly overrun with platypuses — a large platypus statue (wearing the tiniest of hats) graced the center of the pond; the gift shop included a range of platypus merch, including adorable crocheted platypus plushies; and multiple trails were themed around or depicted platypuses.

Just as many brands lean into particular mascots, it’s brilliant for Phantom Peak to adopt the platypus as their distinctive beacon of whimsy.

A Constantly Changing Environment

Phantom Peak continues to expand and adapt their physical playground. In any new season, some doors may open and others may close.

In contrast to most escape rooms, which tend to reveal their coolest secrets on the first visit, Phantom Peak demonstrated a more tactful approach to replayability.

For players that keep coming back, there’s always new stuff to see and new areas to explore, whether it’s a new ride feature or some cool statues with cryptic markings. You feel welcomed back to a familiar environment, yet it has organically evolved to reflect the passage of time and the progression of the narrative.

For first-time players, though they have nothing to compare to, the restraint of not using 100% of the space, of keeping certain doors closed, creates the feeling that the world extends beyond what you can see. This feeling of depth and vastness, even when an illusion, is deeply compelling.

A Janky Yet Sorta Functional App

David’s critiques of Phantom Peak’s web app unfortunately all still applied during my visit. When it comes to tech, I appreciate attempts to not overengineer, but it’s equally important not to underengineer a solution that needs to address a variety of complex use cases.

While I was with Theresa, we sometimes had multiple trails loaded on our respective phones. When we hit a line at one character or station, we’d switch to a different trail and come back later when there wasn’t a line. Time was precious, and we didn’t feel like spending it waiting.

I quickly hit a wall with this approach when I was solo. None of the trails we’d fully or partially completed on Theresa’s phone were saved on mine. When I tried to switch between trails on my phone, the app got confused, froze up, and lost all my data, forcing me to sit in a corner for 20 minutes recreating my progress with the help of built-in hints.

By “multithreading” trails, we were not playing Phantom Peak the intended way, and I don’t recommend you follow our lead with this approach. Nonetheless, it was disappointing to see how quickly the app broke down as we colored slightly outside the lines.

Even without designing a native app, there are multiple ways to avoid these scenarios. Generate sharable “checkpoint” hashes to ensure players can easily retrieve their progress and share it with others. Allow teammates to merge their data. Give characters override codes for each trail so they are better empowered to help guests if and when they hit these tech glitches.

To its credit, Phantom Peak’s minimalist app worked well when it worked. But when it stopped working, it truly crashed and burned.

A Thoughtful Approach to Questing

At the core of any quest-based, open-world experience is the quality, quantity, and flow of its content. Beyond being big and pretty, the world must feel vibrant, full, and layered. The interactions must feel meaningful and directional, leading toward something more and not just spinning players’ wheels.

It’s hard to pull this off — and many open-world experiences fail to be more than an empty shell — but Phantom Peak impressively got most things right.

Each trail centered around a different character, allowing us to delve into their backstory and personality while also still zigzagging us through the town and establishing intricate cross-character relationships.

Each trail also included at least one special moment, whether it involved a cool prop, a magical interaction, or an intimate 1:1 where we were let in on a secret. Some moments were more memorable than others, but none were forgettable.

Phantom Peak is designed to encourage depth over breadth in play style. It was much more enjoyable to lean into actor interactions than to rush around trying to complete all the trails. I know — because I tested out both approaches, first prioritizing the immersive theater and then playing for completion in my second show. Phantom Peak is not an escape room, nor does it contain many true puzzles, and it shouldn’t be played as if it were either of those genres.

Furthermore, while actor interactions got increasingly more entertaining as we established a personal rapport with our favorite characters, certain machine interface interactions got repetitive if overdone or rushed.

All that said… I love collecting things, and Summer’s Peak‘s set of 11 gorgeously designed trail cards absolutely lit me up. It brought me great joy to collect a full set. I just wish I’d had another 1 or 2 shows over which to spread out my questing.

To continue my wishful thinking, I’ll admit that I’m jealous of locals who can attend every season multiple times, along the way amassing an impressive collection of trail cards. I wish Phantom Peak would offer Phantom Peak-branded booklets or binders designed to fit their trail cards as an “official” way for players to display their collections — and to show off their dedication to this utterly delightful, ever-growing world of whimsy.

Visit Phantom Peak

This weekend is the last weekend of Wintermas. Tickets are still available.

The next season will be Spring at the Peak: The Festival of Innovation. Pre-sale is now open. Join the Phantom Peak mailing list to access these tickets now.

We discussed Phantom Peak in-depth with Creative Director Nick Moran in Season 5, Episode 1 of the Reality Escape Pod.