Room Escape Artist

All the information is in the review

Location: at home

Date Played: May 28, 2026

Team Size: 1-6; we recommend 1-2

Duration: 120+ minutes

Price: about $27

REA Reaction

Taskmaster is the irreverent British game show that pits a panel of comedians against a variety of humiliating and/ or brain-burning, well, tasks. Its most iconic challenges reward keen attention to detail, lateral thinking, and the ability to notice patterns. As such, the show’s template offers a fertile and eclectic palette from which to create an escape room.

Ginger Fox Games’ Taskmaster: The Escape Room – Special Edition aimed to distill the puzzliest elements of the show into a box. Dry British humor found its way into many of the materials, and nearly every surface hosted at least one reference to an iconic show mainstay.

And boy, were there a lot of surfaces, including — deep breath — elements to build a 3D house, 2 decks of cards, 2 secret boxes, 2 booklets of gameplay information/ flavor text, a reference guide to key symbols and cards, and an instructions letter. I found the cardboard house and all materials to be worthy of 3 points out of 5, serviceable though not extravagant. Many at-home escape games with 3D environments favor form over function in a way that feels superfluous. Not so here; the best puzzles in Taskmaster: The Escape Room utilized dimensionality and perforated cardboard in ways that had me shouting its praises to the rafters and punching the walls. I pounced on those interactions like a puma.

However, the sheer quantity of materials covering my table at the start of the game instantly overwhelmed me. The stuffed-cat-named-Patatas-sized box’s contents ballooned the game’s footprint to the size of a caravan dining table. Additionally, the linear gameplay felt at odds with the maximalist aesthetic. Straightforward puzzles with simple objectives could be solved in less than a minute. When a puzzle required reviewing all the available materials, however, any flow state achieved slowed to a trickle. The game advertised a 2 hour+ play time, which proved accurate on account of the volume of search-dependent puzzles.

When watching Taskmaster, I find guiltless schadenfreude in seeing comedians’ sanity sink in a quicksand pit of tedium (like counting how many baked beans are in a can). However, actually performing an equally-torturous task within the game was far less fun — especially absent beratement by a bevy of jovial jokesters. One puzzle in particular had one of the most mundane and belabored solves I’ve seen in an at-home escape game. While the final reveal of the puzzle was enjoyable, the process to get there was less a page turner and more an absolute casserole.

This game took quite a few swings at iterating upon or synthesizing a variety of at-home escape experiences. However, despite some inspired interactions, Taskmaster: The Escape Room felt more like a chore. Decide for yourself whether it’s worth a play. Your time starts now.

Who is this for?

• Fans of the show Taskmaster
• At-home escape room completionists
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• The Taskmaster IP has you under its spell, like an all-powerful tree wizard
• Some truly clever uses of the 3D space

Story

Taskmaster Greg Davies tasked you with the simplest yet most devious of tasks: Solve a gauntlet of puzzles to escape the iconic Taskmaster house.

Setup

15 puzzles separated players from victory. Numbered task cards led to puzzles within the game materials, which led to a letter or symbol, which led to an answer card, which led to more task cards. The game encouraged players to manipulate, stack, write on, and look through materials to find messages and symbols.

Gameplay

Taskmaster: The Escape Room – Special Edition was a standard play-at-home escape game with a low-to-moderate level of difficulty.

The search-heavy gameplay demanded players to make connections, find patterns, and sift through noise.

Analysis

➕ The most memorable puzzles required players to interface with the 3D house in ways that validated the presentation and production. They were cheeky, accessible, and minimized time between the aha and the final solve. Much like a pendulum, they drew the eye.

➖ The game did not advise players to build the 3D house until after the first task. This disrupted the start of the game and dramatically expanded the space required for play. Players should know roughly how much space a game requires before the start playing.

➕ The provided checklist of tasks with space to write down solutions made it easy to pause the game and then resume with minimal confusion.

➖ The puzzles drastically differed in length and complexity with little consideration made to ramping difficulty.

➖ Taskmaster has an IP problem. As a show, it excels in any country and language. In REA’s experience, neither the 2023/ 2024 Christmas crackers nor the Taskmaster VR game nor Taskmaster: The Escape Room fulfill the promise of making players feel as though they’re in their own version of the show they know and love. I remain cautiously optimistic that Taskmaster: The Advent Calendar – Volume 2 (review coming soon) can capture the spirit of the show more successfully.

➕ / ➖ The game could be played entirely analog, a rarity in modern home escape games. However, the hint paper did little to guard players from seeing the hints or solutions to other puzzles. The optional hint website with videos from Little Alex Horne himself proved an easier way to avoid spoilers and imbue the game with more Taskmaster magic.

➖ The final puzzle’s digital interactions suffered from sound issues, which made the finale of the game feel confusing instead of climactic.

➕ Before play started, the game instructions alerted players to the fact that certain materials would be marked on or otherwise defaced. Digital copies existed online, and having access to these materials early did not spoil any puzzles. With this accommodation, the game remained pristine for others to potentially play it.

➖ The lack of content gating transformed many of the game’s varied puzzle types into search puzzles.

❓On the Taskmaster web store, the special edition was the only version available. The description touted “exclusive features” but didn’t list them out. At $27, the production proved justified (if not overly generous). Still, the marketing and labelling were more disorienting than a magnificent walk off a runway.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: a decent amount of table space (at least 3′ x 4-5′)
• Required Gear: a writing implement and – if you want to ensure the game can be played by others – a printer and scissors

Buy your copy of Taskmaster: The Escape Room – Special Edition, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.