26 February 2024
Hounds Escape presents The Acid Bath Murderer, a brand new experience which blends escape game elements, the story of a real life serial killer and immersive special effects together. They have had years of experience and creative success with 3 previous live escape room games in Crawley, they provide award winning escapes to live and to leave reality behind.
To know more on who Hounds are, we recommended checking out our article by clicking here!
We were kindly invited along to the press preview of this brand new show for The Acid Bath Murderer, labelled more as a show & immersive experience than an escape room, we were intrigued to see how this would work out. We would be expected to laugh, scream and explore our way through the history of John Haigh, learning how he became one of the UK’s most twisted serial killers who was also based in Crawley, where Hounds are based!
The website lists it as “a new, true crime, edu-tainment, scare experience. Combining escape game challenges, cinematic moments and special effects to immerse you into the true story of John Haigh.”
The experience lasts between 75-90 minutes and includes a private experience of your own group which can be between 2-6 players, a live actor guiding you through the story, a 360 degree immersive storytelling set, challenges, a cinematic finale and of course a team photo. Costing £34.95 per person with 3 tickets being the minimum purchase at the moment, this is a premium experience.
Theming & Storyline – 10/10
You cannot fault the detail in both the story and theme for The Acid Bath Murderer. The team have gone into as much detail as possible in creating a true immersive experience, which is factual yet very realistic down to the smallest of details. With the story being about John Haigh’s life, a real life serial killer in the 1940s, they have managed to recreate similar rooms and moments that would of matched to back then. The storyline was perfect, with it having different rooms relating to different time periods of his life. The information wasn’t just given out in an audio clip or a video or a monologue from an actor, they combined it all together to make it entertaining & rememberable. With only so much given in each room and at different stages, it felt the story sunk in a lot more and we wanted to keep following his story and know what happened next.
One of the coolest features for us was that as you completed challenges, you collected time cards which had an interesting fact from his life. Whilst it was a challenge to collect these, the more we had, the more we could get to know about his story and what made lead him to conduct the actions he did in his lifetime.
Adding in the special effects, the fantastic cinematic ending and of course the live actor/actors who really make this experience what it is, the whole combination of The Acid Bath Murderer is spectacular.
Puzzles & Flow – 9/10
Whilst not an escape room experience as such, this show does have elements of escape room challenges whilst you are exploring. Having to find certain items, unlock padlocks and collect these tokens throughout the timezones. Whilst it does not matter if you collect all of the tokens in each area, this is the challenge element and gives you more of a reason to explore & solve the puzzles. Some of the challenges were quite easy and stood out more than others but some did provide a good team building task which needed all of us involved. This assisted with the flow of the experience and as you can see, we struggled to find them all but have heard plenty of teams have done so!
Uniqueness – 10/10
The Acid Bath Murderer is unique from being the only room we believe based on the Crawley’s serial killer and the style it is showcased in. Whilst not an escape room, we do love how this is where experiences are now leading up to, being more immersive and creative compared to your standard escape in 60 minutes puzzle boxes. A lot of attention to detail has gone into creating how this would work and we know the team are still fine tuning it to be the best version it can be. We are huge fans of how it played out and would love to see more of this style, with the effects and storytelling used more in future experiences.
As you can see, Hounds have created a true masterpiece with their brand new experience The Acid Bath Murderer. Having a truly unique theme & story to tell with a fantastic production & build quality, nothing feels missed or cheap in this experience. We had a great visit overall with us meeting with the creative team and family behind Hounds Escape afterwards, as they told us more interesting details on their business so far. We also had some lovely drinks and snacks before we went into the room as we arrived about 30 minutes early.
A huge thank you to the team at Hounds Escape for inviting us to the press preview of The Acid Bath Murderer. We thoroughly enjoyed our adventure. They did provide it complimentary in return of our review, thoughts, photos & videos. We managed to put together a TikTok which if you want to see more of this high quality experience then we recommended to have a cheeky glimpse there.
With 3 other experiences at Hounds Escape which are more escape based experiences, we look forward to returning to returning in the near future. For all tickets and latest information, we recommended you follow Hounds on social media.
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