Room Escape Artist

Nurse Mythology

Location: Reading, England

Date Played: February 11, 2025

Team Size: 4-6; we recommend 3-4

Duration: 120 minutes

Price: £40 per player for a team of 4 to £33 per player for a team of 6

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players must crawl and enter small spaces

Emergency Exit Rating: [A] Push To Exit

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

As a long-time fan of Deadlocked Escape Rooms’ virtual experiences, like The Cyphstress and The Insiders, I’d been excited to make the trip out to Reading to visit their in-person escape rooms. Their newest experience, The Reading Witch, was ambitious, terrifying, and at times hilarious. This was a thoroughly idiosyncratic campy-horror escape room that truly only Deadlocked could have created. It’s special when an escape room exudes this much personality and passion, and it might well be Deadlocked’s most polished production to date.

With a game clock of 2 hours, The Reading Witch is currently one of the longest escape rooms in all of the UK. Deadlocked Escape Rooms used this extra time to build out a larger world and push the theatrics. That’s not to say that the space itself was overly massive for the active play style it embraced. Deadlocked was clever in the ways they built tension and guided us throughout the environment, though certain interactions could have been better designed to accommodate larger teams. (One scene was nearly cramped even just with our 2 players!)

Deadlocked consistently stands out for their creativity, but some of their past productions were lacking in polish. My team also played The Time Machine, which was one of the most playfully unique time travel escape rooms I’ve encountered. Yet, as David’s 2020 review noted, “The set was a mixed bag. It looked really good for a homemade set, but it looked noticeably homegrown.” This homegrown aesthetic was endearing, but it often felt like Deadlocked didn’t quite have the vocabulary to fully articulate their fantastic ideas within the build skills and resources they possessed at the time.

With The Reading Witch, Deadlocked channeled their classic creativity and charm while also leveling up their production quality, editing, and overall focus. Everything was still homemade, but generally in a more polished and intentional way.

On the international escape room stage, the UK hasn’t gotten much recognition in recent years. On one hand, I can understand why: it’s hard to compete with the sprawling blockbusters that fill many mainland European countries and claim top spots in the TERPECAs. No UK escape rooms I’ve encountered are currently at that level. Yet, I think it’s negligent to ignore the numerous very good escape rooms throughout much of the UK. In fact, I’ve found that the accessible average in this region matches or exceeds that of many major US cities, like New York or San Francisco, especially if you strip away the higher priced premium escape rooms in those markets.

Building off of that foundation, The Reading Witch hinted at an emerging “premium tier” of escape rooms in the UK. They’re not trying to compete with the flashiest sets or the most dazzling special effects out there — nor should they — but they’re telling a memorable story, taking interesting risks, and balancing puzzles and horror in a way that few escape rooms globally manage to pull off well. The Reading Witch was a stellar experience worth going out of your way to visit.

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Story seekers
• Horror fans
• Adventure seekers
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• Top-notch campy horror
• An exciting balance of puzzles and scares

Story

As participants on a ghost-hunting reality TV show, we visited a spooky cabin that was said to have once been a wartime witch’s abode.

Setting

The Reading Witch took us to a rustic wooden cabin in the forest. Tangled foliage covered up some old equipment, and peeking inside the house, we could make out an array of arcane decor.

Gameplay

Deadlocked Escape Rooms’ The Reading Witch was a theatrical escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around making connections, solving puzzles, and evading a character.

Analysis

➕ Whereas many horror escape rooms go light on the puzzles, The Reading Witch was the rare hybrid that was genuinely scary while also containing a bounty of hearty puzzles. The gameplay organically switched between these two modes, and even when the game built tension, it ensured that we were never too on edge to puzzle properly.

😱/➕ The Reading Witch was an actively scary experience with multiple jump scares and in-room actors. If you unconditionally hate horror, this may not be the game for you. That said, Deadlocked did an excellent job of adapting the intensity to each player.

➕/➖ Deadlocked leveled up their set design in The Reading Witch. It was detailed, attractive, and generally quite polished, while still adhering to their admirable commitment to using sustainable and recycled materials. Lighting, sound, and scents helped to further level up the atmosphere. There was still room for further refinement, with wires and seams occasionally visible, but this overall represented a direction we’re excited to see continued in future Deadlocked productions.

➕ The puzzles throughout The Reading Witch were creative and playful, emerging organically from the environment.

➕/➖ Before entering the primary setting for The Reading Witch, we were briefed for our roles as supernatural investigators on some sort of reality TV show. We learned afterwards that this framing was spoof on a British supernatural mockumentary program called Ghostwatch. I love the intended humor around this extra layer, yet the core gameplay lost this thread almost immediately. Especially given the creators’ backgrounds in film, I’d have loved to see a primary objective which carried our documentary role through to the end.

➕ The Reading Witch utilized a number of practical effects that delighted and surprised us.

➖ The requisite hiding spot in one scene was too small to reasonably accommodate The Reading Witch‘s minimum of 4 players. When players sought alternate locations, it compromised the impact of the scene.

➕ We learned about the titular character’s backstory directly through a puzzle. By adding nuance and depth to this scary character, The Reading Witch largely avoided more problematic and sexist “witch” tropes.

➖ A layered logic puzzle could have been better physically situated in the space. With some redundant cluing and lots of pieces, we were tripping over ourselves both conceptually and physically.

➕ The Reading Witch forced us to make a choice with grave stakes, anchoring the narrative and our roles in it.

➖ A late-game scene involved a number of creative and thematic interactions that were all a bit messier than intended. As is, they required extra verbal prompting which had us second guessing ourselves and diminished some of the tension that the experience had worked so hard to build. The lighting in this scene also could have been improved so we could properly see a key narrative detail.

➕ The finale was bloody brilliant, taking full advantage of Deadlocked’s theatrical strengths while transforming our understanding of the space and story.

Tips For Visiting

• The Reading Witch is 18+ or with parental advisory.
• Just a 12-minute walk from Deadlocked Escape Rooms, , we recommend visiting Siren Craft Brew for a meal and a tasty pint. Their beer “The Cyphstress” was the subject of Deadlock’s online escape room of the same name!

Book your hour with Deadlocked Escape Rooms’ The Reading Witch, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Deadlocked Escape Rooms provided media discounted tickets for this game.