Can You Save The World From A Killer Virus? – AIM Escape Review

*We were given a complimentary game at AIM Escape in exchange
for an honest view so all thoughts and opinions are my own

I am a huge fan of escape rooms having done a few over the past years. It always amazes me the work and thought which goes into them, well most of them anyway. Recently I was invited along to AIM Escape rooms located in Aldgate to try out one of their rooms and I jumped at the chance to see if my brain power would allow us to escape. AIM is all about involvement, full immersion, complex narratives, extreme challenges and realistic sets. This isn’t the type of escape room where you’ll be greeted with a bookshelf of old books and a wardrobe you’ll eventually go through to reach the next room. There’s a lot more to it.

Patient Zero escape room at AIM

We tried out ‘Patient Zero’ which is the brands most difficult rooms. It is based around rogue scientists from a secret facility who let a virus lose which must be contained or humankind will cease to exist. You have 60 minutes to contain the bio-threat, secure the facility and escape uninfected which is a pretty strong storyline if nothing else.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the room itself but one thing I loved is how everything flowed. You could look around and gauge the room but you needed to complete one thing in order to open another thing so there was an order to it. And then in the final room of our experience, there were individual interactions which could all be done at the same time. It’s clear whoever created the room really thought about it which is something I really appreciate. I’ve done a few escape rooms in the past where you could complete some aspects of the room out of order and sometimes this ruined the outcome or next step.

How AIM escape room compares to other escape rooms

AIM is pretty unique compared to the other escape rooms I have tried as it’s fully automated. There are no locks and keys, everything is technical so it’s all about codes and machines which I liked. Doing it this way meant it was less about searching the room to find keys stuck to random places. It was all about thinking which meant finishing each task was so much more rewarding as you felt like you earned it. It was also amazing the cutting edge technology used and the creativity behind it. It’s clear real talent, thought and money has been put in this room which made it feel even more value for money, as we all know escape rooms don’t tend to come out cheap.

We did the room with 3 of us which I think was a nice number, although 4 would have also been fine. It was a real thinker although we didn’t really need much help with any of the clues, we just had to really think about some of the bits. In some escape rooms, we’ve had walkie talkies and you can ask for clues but in this one, you just speak out loud. If a clue can be given, or the team think it’s needed it comes as part of the game making it feel like the other team of scientists are talking to you. This kind of interaction made it feel more real and less like a game. It was definitely more of a thinking escape room than we’d done before but not so difficult that we had no hope of escaping. In fact, we managed it in 51 minutes which we were really happy with.

AIM escape room review- Final thoughts

I’m going to be bold and say this is the best escape room experience I’ve ever had, and even though £40 a person might seem pricey I think it’s well worth the cost. Luke is keen to go back and try out a room called ‘Psychopaths Den’ although I think that might be a bit too much for me so I’ll have to send him off on his own for that one.

Have you ever been to an escape room before?

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