Time for round 2 at The Panic Room in Gravesend but this time, we take on a more chilling theme!

For those who don’t know, The Panic Room Gravesend is a huge multi venue in Kent. Split across 3 locations, each building offers a selection of games. 

We took a more in depth look into the business in that review, which you can find by clicking here!

This time we find ourselves to a slightly different location which is 1 of the 3 hubs. Here you can find The Dollhouse, Wizard Of Oz, The Sacrifice and the room we played, The Happy Institute. So with it being the more scary hub (excluding Wizard Of Oz), we were excited to see what they had to offer this time round.

Storyline & Theming: 7/10

The story of The Happy Institute was slightly dark and twisted but with a happy label on top of it. This false sense of security within the story was super clever, and began right from the start of our experience. The experience had a pre story before you start your experience, it was great to have this additional layer added in to make sure you was fully immersed. As advised on the website, the experience does contain a live actor but, the use of this actor is simple yet effective, so I wouldn’t be put off just by this element. The theming throughout was like a lab facility and had many matching attributes. Overall, both these elements linked nicely and really help set the scene and gave some enjoyable gameplay elements. Well, as enjoyable as being in a lab after taken an experimental happy drug can be!

Uniqueness: 6/10

The Happy Institute wasn’t as unique as a room as compared to something such as The Loop, but with the live actor, pre story delivery and how the gameplay came together, it was very immersive and unique in that way. With many enjoyable elements to the puzzles, what the actor could bring and how they integrated themselves into the adventure, it certainly put our skills to the test, with even us missing the most obvious things due to the scary nature. 

The Happy Institute scored 20/30 which is 3.5 stars in our ratings and overall, it is a worthy scary experience that isn’t too scary but is actually difficult. So it is worth noting all of this prior to booking this room! 

A huge thanks to our games master Robert, who played his part excellently and made us have a very enjoyable time with The Panic Room for our second time!