It’s great to see the UK escape room community coming together to celebrate some of the incredible games being created across the country.
The results of the first UK Escape Room Awards have now been announced, with experienced enthusiasts, each having played at least 50 different UK rooms, voting to create a national Top 50 (you can see the results here).
International awards such as TERPECA are fantastic for showcasing the very best escape rooms around the world, but the UK has sometimes found it difficult to gain the same representation as some other countries. That certainly doesn’t mean we’re short of brilliant games.
Having an awards programme focused specifically on the UK gives the industry another opportunity to celebrate what is being created much closer to home.
One of the things that immediately stands out about the Top 50 is its variety. There are horror experiences, sci-fi adventures, detective stories, fantasy worlds, bank heists, magical experiences, aliens, submarines and even a bakery.
There are also very different approaches to what an escape room can be, from traditional puzzle-led games through to highly immersive and theatrical experiences.
Perhaps more importantly, the list demonstrates the quality and creativity found amongst the UK’s independent escape room operators.
The geographical spread is impressive too. The Top 50 stretches from Cornwall to Belfast, Edinburgh to Brighton, and includes operators in cities, towns and communities right across the country.
It’s a good reminder that you don’t necessarily need to travel to London, or overseas, to find a genuinely outstanding escape room.
We were also delighted to discover that 24 of the Top 50 are already No Spoilers clients.
That means a huge amount to us.
We only launched No Spoilers as RiskBox’s dedicated escape room and immersive entertainment insurance offering around 18 months ago. We came into the sector because we felt it needed insurance advice that better understood how these businesses actually operate (and we love escape rooms).
Since then, the welcome we’ve received from owners and the wider community has been fantastic.
So, a big thank you to everyone who has trusted us with their business so far. We hope we’ll have the opportunity to work with even more of you in the future.
We genuinely love escape rooms ourselves. So far, we’ve played 23 of the Top 50, with our most recent visit being Soggy Bottom Bakery at Mindworks in Worthing, which finished at number 10.
For us, that’s part of the attraction of working with this industry. Escape rooms combine storytelling, puzzles, technology, set design and a little bit of theatre to create something you can completely immerse yourself in for an hour or so.
And looking through this year’s Top 50 has inevitably added a few more trips to the diary.
A huge congratulations to Fear of the Unknown at Enigma Escape Cornwall, which took the number one spot, as well as The Reading Witch at Deadlocked Escape Rooms at number two and Mr Copplestone’s Curiosity Shoppe at Escape Quest at number three.
But recognition shouldn’t stop with the Top 50.
The awards also recognised Regional Highly Commended games and a much wider group of finalists. And, as anyone who spends time playing escape rooms knows, there are plenty of brilliant games and operators that won’t appear on any particular list.
Awards are ultimately a snapshot of people’s experiences and opinions. What this one does particularly well is shine another spotlight on the creativity, investment and enthusiasm that exists throughout the UK escape room industry.
We’ll hopefully be doing exactly that on 5 October, when the No Spoilers Escape Room & Immersive Owners Gathering takes place at the Black Country Living Museum. You can grab your ticket here.
We’re looking forward to catching up with lots of friends from across the industry, including several operators represented in the Top 50.
Congratulations to everyone recognised in the inaugural UK Escape Room Awards. And here’s to discovering even more brilliant rooms over the next 12 months.
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash
