It must be hard to make your mark on London's booming escape room scene. With variants on the get-locked-in, puzzle-your-way-out events sprouting up all over London — and with themes ranging from Sherlock's study to zombie apocalypse — it's impressive that Time Run still has something different to offer.
Set in a quiet sidestreet near London Fields, Time Run's original and most popular game, The Lance of Longinus, bills itself as 'an escape room adventure': a multi-room time-travel-themed journey, for when one escape room just isn't enough.
Groups of up to six can tackle the time portal game together. When we try to book for just three of us we're gently — and accurately — warned that they'd recommend coming as a four or five if we can: 'They're challenging games...'
And it's a warning we'll come to be grateful for, somewhere in a dark series of rooms deep in Hackney, between the near future and the ancient past. Not only is this fiendishly difficult in places, it's also epic in scope, with enough bells, whistles, cogs and gongs to push us dangerously close to not completing the mission within the hour. In fact, apparently just 35% of teams make it out triumphant (we assume the rest of them still make it out, though...)
Our group's a mix of escape room newbies and hardened veterans, and we complete the mission with just three minutes to spare.
What happens in the time portal stays in the time portal, and we wouldn't dream of spoilers. But it's safe to say Time Run's Lance of Longinus is a bit more epic than your average escape room.
Time Run, 15 Helmsley Place, E8 3SB.
