Present, in August 2023, were: The Ant, Aunty Ant, Lioness, Parker.

Scary games are never really my first choice – it often feels the darkness and frights take away from the core of puzzling. But we’ve had a few good ones recently, and Lioness was keen, so we ended up with The Haunted as the second part of our Norwich double-header.

On a high from our smashing success in Tomb of Akhenaten we were very much looking forward to this, although we had to assure the GMs that we weren’t quite the super-speedy crack team that we had appeared to be in our first game. Our new GM Lee (apologies if bad spelling) was also terrific and proceeded to set the story well for us in the darkened lounge of their fantastic, historic building.

The story is a dark one – a plague, a child, a boarded-up house, a terrible mistake, a tortured spirit. It uses the historic nature of our location well, and there are atmospheric scares right from the start. Cryptic aren’t aiming for out-and-out horror, so this isn’t the most terrifying game available, but it is definitely a notch up from gently spooky and only a small step down from blood-freezingly creepy. The jump scares are very well-timed and a good range of special effects give it a touch of magic. No gore, and it isn’t ever entirely black, but definitely not a game for self-declared wimps. The ratio of scares to puzzling was about perfect for us though, with our slightly bolder than usual team.

There was a decent range of puzzles, quite a lot of practical tasks, and some interesting takes on old favourites. There was some ingenuity there too. Most of the puzzles did follow the story and adhere to the haunted concept – but I can’t describe them as consistently on theme. I’m a historical pedant, so anachronisms in games do wind me up more than the next person, and this was very much my issue here. The story (plague) and actual location and the set of the first space would place the era as maybe 17th century; however this rapidly morphs into more Victorian style. Moving through the game, some props used then push it more Edwardian (particularly dress in photographs), followed by 1930s toys, a 1950s telephone and finally, jumping the shark, a 1970s record player. We were hurtling through decades so fast I half expected the next room to contain Spice Girls CDs and tickets to the Millennium Dome. Time travel is not part of the plot. This is a me problem, but I did find it annoying.

Annoying to Aunty Ant was the darkness. We’d battled on heroically using the two provided (good) torches, but over the larger space it eventually became too much. To Lee’s absolute credit, he was there with extra light the second Aunty Ant’s patience snapped with her passive-aggressive “It would be so much more fun if I could actually see!” We also struggled with a couple of red herrings that seemed suspiciously like dead puzzles, which sapped our time and we ran over the hour. So, overall, mixed feelings about this one. The set is expansive and the narrative is thrilling, and we were impressed with how they handled allowing us to finish the game as well. But just too many niggles and frustrations for our team to completely love it.

• Storyline: Basic narrative is good, but the timey-wimey stuff makes it a bit silly in practice.
• Theming and Set: Great warren of atmospheric rooms, just a little too dark for us to see the locks.
• Searching: We had some searching struggles.
• Puzzles: More practical than intellectual, lots of prop interaction.
• Physicality: A couple of steep steps, but otherwise straightforward.
• Scare factor: We did scream a bit, and very cautiously opened doors.
• Company Age Guidance: “It is not suitable for players under the age of 14. There must be someone 16+ in the room responsible for anyone under the age of 16.”
• Age suitability: You’d want your 14yo to be fairly robust, but there isn’t much here that is adult only.

Cryptic Escape website

Also at this venue: Tomb of Akhenaten