Room Escape Artist

This guy really gets around

Location: Athens, Greece

Date Played: February 28, 2025

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

Duration: 120 minutes

Price: from 35€ per player for teams of 3 to 26€ per player for teams of 6

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration: All players need to crawl and climb stairs. There is also fog. The actors will touch you, but you have a chance to say, at the start of the game, if you want this to be generally kept to a minimum.

Emergency Exit Rating: We were locked in various spaces within the game. We’re unsure what fire escape measures there were, if any.

Physical Restraints: [F] No Emergency Release

REA Reaction

I’m really conflicted about The Ghost Writer; it had some phenomenal things happening within its walls.

The premise of approaching our favorite author for an autograph only to discover that he was a terrible person (that’s not a spoiler, it’s overtly a horror game) was unique and intriguing. Horror Productions had very talented actors performing some beautifully designed scenes (especially early on)… and the finale was something that I won’t soon forget. I have a lot of respect for so much of what The Ghost Writer accomplished.

Conversely, there are a number of things that I do not respect within The Ghost Writer.

One prime example is the single most uncomfortably designed crawlspace that I have seen in some 1,300 games. It was so bad at being a crawlspace that it was almost funny… except that it was painful to interact with.

However, to truly illustrate my inner conflict with The Ghost Writer, there was a performance early in the game that I found hauntingly beautiful, but unfortunately it also used open flames in an environment that I feel confident was quite flammable. While I fundamentally believe that open flames should be kept out of escape rooms as the risk for accident is too high, I will acknowledge that there were ways to make that scene fire retardant. I just don’t believe that it was. And even if it was, the fire safety of the building itself was overtly terrible. At the conclusion of our game, the gamemaster had a surprisingly difficult time unlocking the front door. There was clearly no way out for us if something had gone wrong.

I have to be real with you. I didn’t get into writing about escape rooms to be the safety monitor. My love is for playing, enjoying, and sharing my love for these games with others. In my heart, I just want to tell you that The Ghost Writer offered a novel, if uncomfortable, experience that I think back on fondly… but that’s only half the story. The other half is that I think back on the dangers of The Ghost Writer and would feel terrible if I encouraged someone to play it and something bad happened to them.

While The Ghost Writer probably isn’t the most hazardous game that I played in Athens, it’s still on the list of games that I cannot in good conscience encourage you to visit… and I am sad about that.

Who is this for?

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

Why play?

• A few beautifully performed theatrical scenes
• Intense horror gameplay
• Solid puzzles

Story

Who wouldn’t want to meet their favorite author to ask for an autograph? In our case, our favorite author wrote so many vivid books about murder… but surely there was no way that they were truly firsthand accounts of his own atrocities, was there? No one would be crazy enough to publish the stories of their own crimes.

Setting

The Ghost Writer felt like a haunted house. The cobweb-covered home compellingly conveyed that this was a space of dread. In many ways, the set was a stage, and it did a good job of creating a space for the performers to use. However, the set also had insufficient sightlines, which sometimes made it difficult for the entire group to see the performers do their work.

While the space frequently looked good, the crawlspaces often felt shoddily built, and they didn’t look or feel great. One of them was so poorly constructed that it made me angry.

Gameplay

Horror Productions’ The Ghost Writer was a theatrical horror escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Core gameplay revolved around searching, solving puzzles, making connections, and limited character interactions.

Analysis

➕ This was an original premise. It’s perhaps only the second time an escape room has taken us to the home of a famous author, and the first time we were there to meet the legend himself. We were intrigued by the setup, and by the most excellent game title. The Ghost Writer leaned into this premise throughout the experience, making it more interesting than many other horror experiences we’ve played.

➕ The performers were outstanding. The acting was artful and never felt like torture porn. Their talents really shone in their scenes with each other – cutscenes that we watched from a safe vantage point, but which gave us insight into their characters, relationship, and motives.

➖The sightlines for cutscenes were inadequate. With our team of four, within any given scene, we couldn’t all see what was happening.

➕  The performers moved through the space expertly and always undetected, which was truly impressive. Their timing was impeccable.

❌ In one beautifully haunting scene, a character extinguished a live flame. While the flame was small and controlled, and this action is typically safe, the amount of flammable cotton cobwebs nearby and throughout the set gave us pause. The door was locked. The risk may seem small, but it was still a risk, and it was unnecessary. It is possible make fire retardant cobwebs, but literally nothing that we experienced in Greece led us to the conclusion that these would be used. We’d love to be wrong.

❌ There were clearly no fire exits in this game, and at the conclusion of the experience, our gamemaster visibly had difficulty unlocking the front door. To use a technical term: in an emergency, this venue is %^&*ed.

➖ There were many poorly built crawl spaces that were uncomfortable at best, and dangerous at worst. This thing should be put on ice.

➖ One player got a splinter from the set… which wasn’t surprising as many surfaces seemed capable of delivering a splinter.

➕ The puzzles were legitimately puzzley, more so than in many horror experiences. They were well clued and solved cleanly. A late-game puzzle mechanic asked us to recontextualize the space and the story.

➖ A couple of mechanical prop and tech failures undermined some puzzles.

➖ The Ghost Writer dragged on too long. By the end, we’d uncovered the story of the characters and the place, and we understood where the narrative was going… and yet, we had to ride out a gratuitous “fulfillment on the menace” scene that just wasn’t needed.

➕ The finale was dramatic. I’ve never experienced a scene quite like it. It will hang with me for a long time.

➕ Horror Productions created an aftercare scene with a fully designed and constructed set. They built a place to give players closure and time to process a potentially traumatic story. The Ghost Writer was more than madman serial killer; it was a deeper, more taxing experience. There isn’t enough aftercare in horror escape rooms, and this one was really well crafted.

Tips For Visiting

• We think there was street parking in the area.
• The address was #12, but you enter at #10. We were a little confused. However, the door you enter in is pretty loudly thematically decorated.
• For more about fire safety, please read Fire – Forbidden Escape Room Elements and An Open Letter to the Escape Room Owners of Athens Regarding Fire Safety in Your Games