Immaterium - Warhammer 40,000 Escape Room Review

Hi, welcome back to another episode of Furhammer videos

So today the question is, what would you do if you were transported to the, well

believably transported to the grim darkness of the far future? I know what I'd do, I'd try and get out

And in that vein, today I'm going to tell you about my experience at the Warhammer Imperium

Nope, that's the magazine. Warhammer Immaterium Escape Room. Anyway, I'll have more on that just after this

So yeah, welcome back. Right, okay, first thing I need to remember to do this time is ask the question of the week

So let me know in the comments. What do you think of Warhammer escape rooms

Do you wish there was one near you? Is it something you'd want to try? I mean, this is an officially licensed escape room

so it's had all the blessings of the Warhammer team, the Games Workshop team

So is it something you'd want to do it? Is it an experience you'd want

If you could, what kind of setting would you want? Obviously, spaceships really good, but what else would you want an Age of Sigma one

Let me know what you think in the comments below. So my escape room experience, this one's quite a weird one

and it was a long time coming getting this set up. So the people who run it are called Escapology

They run in Nottingham, quite close to Warhammer World, for anyone who knows

what, you know, the connection to games workshop there. I say close, like it's probably about an hour's walk

sort of through a back road in Nottingham or like a five

10 minute drive with parking. So one's in the city centre and one's just on the out

Warhammer Whirls just on the outskirts with its own parking and the escape rooms in the city centre

slightly off the beaten path. Actually, it's about three to five minutes walk from the Warhammer store in Nottingham

So there's a bit of a connection there. So they opened a few years back and they were actually getting

all the staff members were sort of like allowed to invite families and friends free

to their existing escape rooms back when it first opened just so they can kind of get the word out

And we've never been to one before. It's not something I'd have paid for. But we were invited because it turns out that my wife's cousin, so my cousin-in-law, actually worked there

and he let us know about it and said, look, I can get you in. So we're like, yeah, why not

we'll try one out. It's an evening out, isn't it? So we got a couple of friends. I had a fantastic evening doing, the first one we did was called Butcher

It was scary. I'll just say that. It was terrifying. So that's what they had. And at a family barbecue a couple of years back, he said

we're doing a Warhammer one. And I sort of like rolled my eyes. I thought, are you allowed to do that? But it turned out, yeah, they'd sort of like, they got the idea

and they'd approached Games Workshop and said, we want to do this and got the agreement and all those things

So they've got all that set up and ready. And we just saw my mic out

So they've got all that set up and ready. And we planned to go there

We did an announcement about it and said, look, this is a thing. And after I did the announcement, I reached out to Escape A Logic

I think we've done about four or five of their escape rooms now, took a few friends down

And we reached out to them. And I said, look, do you mind if we come and cover it? Because I'd like to get photos and things to actually show off the experience

Writing articles and doing videos is pretty dull when it's just a white screen or a talking head

So you've got to show some images just to kind of give people an idea of the interest and keep people engaged

So never got a response, unfortunately, other than the guy, the manager there emailed me back, whose name was Jim

It turns out it's the same gym who I used to work for back in like 2000 to 2002 when I worked for game, the video game retailer in the UK

So I was like, oh, bloomin' egg. And then, weirdly, a few months later, because they still haven't opened yet, it turns out

So I live in a bit of a weird estate. It's sort of a new estate, so new built

And the internet around here is terrible. It's all really slow ADSL, like 13 meg uploads

So getting these videos uploaded takes me like a day and a half. And I emailed the street saying, look, we can approach BT and we can pay for, like, an upgrade to fibre and do all this

One of the guys who emailed me back lives on my street was one of the guys who owns Escapable Logic

And weirdly, the house he lives in is actually next door to the one that we were originally going to buy

But there was a delay on it. So we moved to this one where the previous intended purchasers have moved out

So that's kind of like that's three connections. I kind of thought the stars are a line in here

We've got to get in. So I emailed him. He put me in touch with kind of the events manager

And we got it all planned. Yay. fun. So we were going to go in March, not March, emailed in March. We were going to go sort of like

April, May 2020. And then obviously 2020 happened. So everything was locked down. Nothing happened

It was crazy. So what they did, because obviously, you know, with escape rooms, you've got to be in it

You've got to physically be in there. And it's quite a closed environment. So they were severely

impacted by COVID. So what they started doing, really, really clever, is offering on

online sessions so you can log in and each of you who is in the escape room essentially controls a staff member and tells them where to go and what to look at and what to pick up and what to do

And it's kind of like nightmare if anyone remembers the old sort of like 1980s, 1990s TV show

And you do that. So myself, Ben, who used to write on the Fahommer blog, you can now find him on Ashenhold Art

and Rob, who still writes with us, kind of our lead writer at the moment, he writes more than me

We all set up one evening to go and do their VR session, but we got a phone call a couple of hours before

saying it had been cancelled due to technical difficulties. So this was like a year year and a half in the making And then just a couple of weeks ago obviously lockdowns ended Some other friends just say look fancy a night out And we said yeah definitely

Do you want to try an escape room? Obviously, two birds, one stone. So we plan to go

And this weekend, we've been. And it was really, really good. So the problem we're telling you about this experience is it's an escape room

So I can't really tell you that much about the actual. room layout location or anything like that because it would ruin it

Like the whole point is to go in blind. And even if you go on the website, there's a video, not Fohammer.com

if you go on the EscapableLogic website, there's a video that kind of gives you an intro to the story

but there's no pictures of the room or anything like that. There is now, we've put some up on Fohhammer.com, and I'll share them in a moment

But, yeah, so that was kind of the thing, is, is I can't really tell you anything about it

So let me just tell you about the experience more than anything. So you go to Escapable Logic

It's, again, it's slightly off the beaten path. And it's just, it's in an old Victorian style

I think it's Victorian anyway. Like old style townhouse, big doors. There's a yoga studio upstairs

And then you knock in, go through the doors, go down some steps

And you're basically in like a waiting area, which has changed quite a bit

When I was first going in there, it was just a white room with a bench. But now it's all stylised and it's like really wooden and really creative

Looks good. LEDs everywhere. Logos. It's really great. And you sit and you wait there and they give you the sort of safety briefing and explain

And you all sit in pods so you're separate, you know, for COVID restrictions and things

But they might be getting rid of the pods due to obviously restrictions ending

I quite like them to be honest, even if, you know, even if the restrictions do go

Because then you're not sat in a big group of a load of people. you sat with your group and you can talk as you're waiting. So you go in, they give you a bit of a

safety briefing and tell you what's going off and then one person takes each group to the different

rooms. So they've got various rooms. So we went to Imitarium, which is in the reception area

They've got some outside and over the road. And yeah, so you go in. And I think the first thing to

talk about is really the production quality. So I, I've mentioned this on the website. Whenever a third party

now tells me, oh, we're making an official thing. I kind of, I always worry. And I worry because

I had an experience back in 2008. I was a big fan of the TV show heroes, only season one

obviously. And I was so in love with that series. I mean, I've always liked my TV shows. I

was so in love with that series. We went to London when the cast came to London. And we followed

them around London to get signatures. We went to the Comic Con event. We went to the Comic Con event. which was on on the Sunday of that week

We went to a couple of other conventions where they were there, and I got things signed, like I got one of the swords signed

And then the organizers of those conventions said, we're doing a two-day, it was called Eclipse

a two-day heroes extravaganza with events and all these things. We were dead excited

The hype was incredible. And we got there on the first day, like, queued outside, really excited

And I remember one of the things they said, I'll get to the point, one of the things they said was

we're going to have a recreation of Isaac's loft. And if you don't know the show, Isaac was like a painter

drug addict, struggled, but he could see into the future and he'd paint what he saw

And there was an episode where they go to the future and in that loft were like all the characters connected via string

And they said, oh, we're going to have a recreation of it. I thought, there's a lot of money going into this

There's thousands of people going. It's in a big convention centre. And, you know, I'd love this

like to get some photos in that sort of room. And I swear, like the room that I turned up to was

it was a store cupboard. It was obviously a store cupboard. They hadn't put anything on the walls to make it look like the colours of the loft or anything

It was just a store covered filled with the cheapest rubbish that they could find

like an easel, some old paints. Like it looked like a school store cupboard

but then they put some wool up and then printed out pictures and put it on

And then they'd put a big mural on the floor, which was obviously a sticker not a painting. And yeah, okay, I wasn't expecting a one-to-one recreation

but let's be fair, I'm in a Warhammer hobby, I'm expecting some level of production quality

But since then, whenever a company says, we're going to make X

that image comes back into my head, and I'm like, oh, God, oh, God, oh, I'm just, I'm, no, no, it's going to be bad

So I did go into this tentatively thinking, what am I going to say in the review if it's really, really bad

And it turns out I don't have to say anything. It was incredible

As soon as you get there from the outside, you can tell what it is. You can sort of like, it's a feature

It really is a feature within the whole place. And I'd been to their previous ones, so that like their butcher one

you could kind of tell it was, it's good and it makes you feel like you're in a basement

but you can very much tell your inner downstairs room with things thrown together

This was spot on. Like, you walk past it. It's got all the LEDs and lights up

It's got propaganda posters to, you know, make sure you know you know your traitors

You know, one of these imperial guards is a traitor, which one. And it looks impressive from the get-go

And you walk in and you stood in a very sort of small room and you're given the, you're given the

kind of like the spiel, the story. And I was just in there and enamoured

And when I was looking around, I was not only thinking, wow, the scales right, the skulls are right, the style is right, the design is right

But the colours were right. Like I don know if when they got in touch with Games Workshop you know they obviously painted it themselves But when they got in touch with Games Workshop did they turn around and go right we going to need 60 litres of lead belcher and about 10 litres of null oil and all this and all that

Did they paint this thing with Games Workshop paints? Because I swear, it was colour match to a T

Like, you'll go in there and it'll be like, yep, I can tell how they made that. And you can. You can tell how they made it

So when you're in there, you're not like immediately transported to. to a spacehawk, but you can tell like this is made of MDF, that's some convoluted tubing

but it's done so well, it is done so incredibly well that you're just like, yeah, I feel

like I'm in a real 40K room. Like they've done a better quality conversion of this than the

tank that sat outside Warhammer World, like, which is, you know, already it's a rhino

but that's showing its age now. This was spot on. And then as for the experience itself

Hang on, I need to adjust. I've sat on my foot. Ow. So as for the experience itself, I can't really tell you much about it

Like an escape room, an escape room is going to a room, search for stuff, find stuff

might be important, might be a red herring, try the stuff with other stuff, a little bit

Monkey Island. And then once you've done that, hopefully you'll get an indication that you're in the right path

or something like that. And you just do that rinse and repeat until

the end, you'll get puzzles, riddles and all kinds of things to get through sort of section by section

and puzzle sequence by puzzle sequence, the rooms. And it's really, really good. So as you go in

like the setup is basically you're on a road trader ship and you're a passenger making a pilgrimage

probably making a pilgrimage to Warhammer World as most of you will be. So you're on a pilgrimage

and you fire up your warp engines and as soon as you transport into the warp a load of

ship systems fail and you've got to make your way out of there using the craziest health

and safety process ever written so appropriately 40k then to be honest but again that's that's

kind of a joke my mate came up with so I need to copyright and he's got the copyright and

everything on it so yeah so you're going in here and basically you're on a spaceship and your

point is to escape. Now, for the Warhammer fans, ooh, warp, I know what that means. And, but for

anyone else, like, it doesn't make, it's a spaceship, you know, so even if you're not a Warhammer

fan, it's, it's basically, it's just a spaceship, woohoo. And, you know, it could be the Sulaco

it could be Galactica, it could be Red Dwarf, as, again, my friends having the only spaceship

reference they knew kept making references to Dwayne Dibbley and Red Dwarf jokes throughout, which

kind of ruined the experience for me, but I'm glad they had a good time considering I paid for it

But yeah, so you go in there and they set it up and they kind of said like

oh, and there's a presence on the ship. Now, at this point, you don't know what you're about to go in for

So, you know, there could be anything through the door. And you don't know where it's going next

So I'm like, you know, I was expecting there could be something jump out at me. There could be, you know, just like a weird smell or some audio, things like that

But yeah. So we went through it and I've got to admit it was really, really

good and as my friends it was their first to me and my wife have done a few escape rooms but my friends

have never really done one before and they went through and they were like really loving like oh

get this get that and putting the pieces together to figure out the puzzles and there's some bits where

you know you can't do this as one person you really really need at least two of you because there's puzzles

where you've got to work together and that's pretty much standard in in any escape room so you know

search find rinse repeat but as i was going through these rooms these

I say these rooms, these sort of sections, and the style was changing, and the atmosphere was getting a bit more grim dark

It was really good to see that, and they were busy trying to solve the puzzles, and I was spending the whole time going, oh, I know this, oh, I know that

And they're just smiling and grinning to the side of my face because I was like

oh, that's a, oh, that's a, hey, is that, and obviously I can't say what

but it was great just to have those nods. Don't get me wrong, like the story, the kind of set up they gave us

I was expecting it to be a bit more Warhammery. And I don't mean in the way that, you know

because I've got a knowledge of Warhammer, I would be able to do better in these rooms

In fact, I did the worst because I was distracted by everything. But, you know, you don't need any knowledge of Warhammer to do this room

But it's just great to have those nods. It's kind of like when you watch Ready Player 1, or at least I did

you're watching Ready Player 1. You're like, I know this, that's Firefly, that's Freddy Kruger

those are the Ninja Turtles. Like, just those moments. of sort of nostalgia and warmth and creativity

and all the while being in a believable environment for both the spaceship and a 40K place

Honestly, I hope you can tell how excited I still am like days later about just how good this was

It really was fantastic. I think the only things, you know, it can't be perfect

I'm a critic at the end of the day, so I've got to have some bad stuff to say. The only things I'd mark it down on

And this is a slight mark. When we went in there, he said

do you want the full Warhammer experience? Or do you want the thing? And everyone agreed for my sake

because I'm reviewing it, do the full Warhammer experience. So I was like, great

So I was expecting, like, there to be a bit more story or something like that

something that, you know, was playing through the audio channel or the speakers or something

But throughout, I get the feeling that there was some story happening

But the problem is, because you're moving stuff and you're banging stuff round, by the time you realise there's something playing on the audio track

and you stopped and you gone everyone and you do get kind of you can end up sort of split and away from each other as you looking at different sections then you end up like missing half of it here in the back end and going was that a clue was that story So if it was there I think they could do with a bit of a rebalance of the audio

you know, because there's a background ambience sound playing, very Warhammer-esque, really good, must be a licensed track from Warhammer, or they've done really well

And that's there, but again, it needed a balance, or at the very least, some kind of pre-alert message to say, incoming message

so that you know to stop and listen to actually either hear the story, if there is one

I genuinely don't know. I got the impression there was, but I never heard it

Or, you know, if it's a clue, because you do get audio clues if you're struggling or something like that throughout the experience

So it's really good. So, yeah, as you go through it, you kind of get to it

And they did this setup and they say, you've got to get to an escape pod. They said there's this presence of something growing

and I was like, ooh, it could be chaos or tyrannids or something. Didn't know what to expect

but throughout, I honestly didn't feel the presence of anything in there

One bit where we ruined it for ourselves, I forgot to mention my friend had pulled his back out that week

So he was walking on a crutch and basically he left his crutch out

but he was sort of going from wall to wall, and it wasn't quite as physically able as he used to

And you do need to be somewhat physically able to do this rule. Unfortunately, it's not the most disabled friendly

it's the way of the escape room there is a physical element

to them just as they are but you can still watch and enjoy

and be part of the experience for the most part and he was going through it

and somehow we got to an area how can I say this without

ruining the okay so there's a bit where you must do something

to open something and there's something that gets opened is held on by a magnetic lock

And as we were looking around, my friend actually managed to brute force this lock

on the thing that opens. And that kind of left us confused a bit

because we stood around going, well, there's nothing in there, apart from some things

And then I think there was a panic because something opened. And I think that was because the guy operating the room

kind of realized, ah, they've skipped this bit with the brute force

I'm going to just move on to the next bit let them continue. So he kind of had to make a bit of a cut there for us. But the problem is

we knew there were things to do still in this area, in this puzzle sequence. So when we moved

to the next sequence and we were a bit lost, we kept going back going, have we missed something? Have we

missed something? But we'd lost it because we'd sort of accelerated forward and we just kept

wasting our time going back. By the end of it, we'd managed to get out, we did manage to

complete it. My wife and I have done a few of these and it only took us about 35 minutes. And

that included the time where I managed to brute force, not intentionally, but I went to open a door with what looked like pulleys, and it turned out the pulley was a pneumatic piston that opened the door, and I just yanked it off. And if you knew me, look, I'm not strong, right? This isn't possible. I can't pull anything off

realize what I said but I can't pull a metal pneumatic piston off the door

so somehow the screws had sheared off or something like that I wasn't yanking on the door

I was just I just went to open it and it came off so anyway

we managed to get out and they put us in sort of 36 minutes was good

I just I think that I felt like that was a bit fast

so maybe the guy who was operate in the room probably yes he had to make that cut for us but there were a few times where

hints kind of accelerated us on but in all honesty because knowing where that part in the

sequence was and what we needed to do to complete we must have been at that point at about 20 minutes

in meaning you know that that's a five following that there was a five minute you know solution

so we could have let us kept going a lot longer trying to work out how we could figure out that puzzle and we'd have got it

But they gave us an audio clue which accelerated us on a bit, a bit faster than probably needed

So we were stuck in that room, we weren't in that room probably for as long as we really should have been

So that's the only bits that are down. But again, afterwards, again, I spoke to them and said, look, the guys have said that we can do a review

So I went back in, took some snaps and did that. But again, the production quality is such that if you are going to Warhammer World or if you're stopping and Nottingham and you're a Warhammer fan, genuinely, you can't miss this experience

Like I said, escape rooms are some of the most fun you can have. If you've not done one, this is a good one to get you started off on

And it is a generally quite easy one. So, you know, it's not going to be too taxing

you don't have to be like some kind of crazy mind hunter or, you know, I have a PhD to get through it

It's relatively straightforward in its approach to puzzles. But just being in that environment and being in that thing is absolutely fantastic

So my recommendation, my review, if you're going to Nottingham and it's a trip and it's a journey

and especially if you're staying over, you cannot miss this. You can't do it

Make this part of your Warhammer journey experience. and there's some good food nearby as well

So, yeah, make that all part of your trip to Warhammer. And you won't regret it, you really won't

Anyway, that's all I had to say about that. It's just me waffling for, what, 25 minutes now

Yikes. So I'm going to leave you to it and shut up and just say, Fohhammer out