Escape Reading – The Vampire Slayers
The Vampire Slayers is designed as a scary game – it’s not a full on horror experience, but it’s a step up from many of the “scary” games we’ve tried. It’s worth noting at the top we were playing a slightly neutered variant of game, because of one of our team not being great with scary stuff but still having a compulsive desire to play every escape game possible. We did get a walkthrough of what we missed though.
The Vampire Slayers casts you as, well, vampire slayers, with the mission being simple: find Dracula, kill Dracula. It’s a game that oozes atmosphere from the start: the spooky music and initial set really get the tone right: the set has an element of decadence to it that fits in with the almost regal take on vampires found in some myths. Which has the side-benefit of making it an actually quite pleasant area to puzzle in. This of course makes the inevitable jump scares that much more jarring and effective. Overall it does a good job of keeping you a little bit on edge while not freaking you out entirely and leaving you a gibbering mess.
As the game progresses there are some neat horror effects employed, including some clever tricks with the soundtrack and some really neat visual effects. Crucially, none of them feel cheap, there’s no “lets just play a loud noise to make you jump” bits in here. The game will certainly make you jump, but it does so imaginatively. One clever touch is that the game provides you with a few weapons as you progress – these are used for puzzles, but also weirdly offered a degree of comfort and helped embolden you somewhat. I guess if fake vampires can make you afraid then it stands to reason that fake swords can make you feel a bit more confident!
The puzzles themselves were generally strong, with a few really different things that we hadn’t seen before. I have to admit that scary games are neither a plus or a minus for me: I’m not a horror movie fan, I don’t enjoy the process of being scared like some people do. But at the same time I’m not hugely bothered by it either: I’m not going to avoid something just because it’s scary. So in the field of escape rooms, that means that the game needs to be strong enough to stand on its own feet even if it didn’t have the scares, which is something this game manages. And what I do enjoy is attempting to keep my brain focused on working out puzzles when it wants to be distracted by fear. All that taken in to account, this game had the perfect balance for me and I would recommend it.
Result – we escaped in around 40 minutes
Date played: 17 September 2017
Team: Dean, Sera, Sharon
Website: https://escapereading.co.uk
Summary: A good game for those who want to try a scarier escape experience but don't want to go for a full-on horror game.
4
Spooky
About the Author
Dean Love Dean is a professional writer who has worked for The Mail On Sunday, The Digital Fix, MicroMart and others.
