“Look for my plum bottom”
Not strictly speaking an escape-the-room adventure but very much in the same arena, Handmade Mysteries’ Lady Chastity’s Reserve is a raucous take on the live team game experience and with a bottle of wine, nay an aphrodisiac, up for grabs, it has the distinction of being the first of this type that our team of regulars actually completed (who knew the incentive of alcohol was all we needed!).
Located in the depths of The Four Thieves pub in Battersea (and a very nice pub it is too), Lady Chastity’s Reserve is a game for up to 5 players in which a series of puzzles, conundrums and clues have to be solved within the hour in order to liberate the final bottle of the “exclusive wine” for which she was famed. Guided by the idiosyncratic and slightly filthy-minded host Gabriel (who will offer up an assist or two when summoned), it’s all really rather good fun.
I can’t say too much more for the mysteries of the room are yours to be discovered – suffice to say that the storyline is well-constructed and the ways in which the challenges are packed into the intimate space is ingeniously done. It is a small room so it quickly got rather hot, though Lady Chastity was thoughtful enough to introduce an air-con unit, and looking back we would have been better creating a little more working room for ourselves at one key moment (hint, hint).
Highly atmospheric, nicely challenging and deeply satisfying (not least because we completed it with barely a minute to spare), you could do a lot worse of an evening than spend an hour in the company of Gabriel, Lady Chastity and some intrepid team-mates.
