Hi all
The fourth escape room that we checked out on our
November-December 2024 trip to Athens and Spain was Don’t Take a Breath at Verone.
The only information that I had read online about Don’t Take
a Breath was that it was TERPECA #8 at the time that we played it, so that was
enough for me. It was not an easy booking to get – we had to liaise directly
with the owner and schedule our trip around that one room. But I am glad that
we did…
The story behind this experience is as follows:
Everything suggested that it was a good idea for
easy money; they had all the information they needed, even the keys to the
house from the security company that was maintained by the father of one of the
group! A helpless, blind man would not be a great obstacle between them and the
money. However, reality turned into a pure nightmare. Because they did not know
that the 'helpless' blind man was a veteran of the Special Forces of the
American army who always carried with him the scars and the trauma of his war
in Iraq in 1991. And the huge isolated house of 230 square meters was his theatre
of operations. This house in this infamous neighbourhood hid more secrets than
they expected and ended up becoming a battlefield. Will the invaders manage to
survive a deadly game of escape?
Don’t Take a Breath was our 325th room to date.
Here is what I thought:
- firstly, this room is incredibly unique. It really was incredibly different to anything I had seen before or since. Whilst it is a scary room, it is not a horror room. I had read that going in, but I did not appreciate what it really meant of course until we experienced it for ourselves;
- so to explain further, DTAB is a not a room where you are being chased by one or more actors whose sole intent is to scare the shit out of you. There is plenty of that kind of thing on offer in Athens, but DTAB isn’t that. Instead, it is more about having players appreciate the game from the experience of the main character in the story, an elderly man with poor vision and hearing who is haunted by his time in the Iraq war. So whilst there are some jump scares and there are some tense moments with character interactions, I found this experience WAY less scary than 90% of the rooms in Athens, particularly once I started to appreciate that this was a different room to most;
- given that the experience is not a horror experience, that allows players to spend more of their energy concentrating on puzzles, which means the designers were able to include more puzzles than most Athens rooms (and they are reasonably challenging). The puzzles in this experience have been designed by a fellow enthusiast and it really shows;
- the quality of the build is incredible. The designer has constructed a two storey house inside a warehouse in a very quiet Athens street. The house feels incredibly authentic, from the props to the wall paper to the creaking floors. There is such a high level of attention to detail here. And in terms of scale, the experience covers 230m2 – it just keeps going and going; and
- the game design and room flow were really well-considered. There are moments where players are separated, but for the majority of the time we were working together to solve puzzles in order to delve further into the room’s story.
I loved Don’t Take a Breath. It had a very strong backstory,
the quality of the theming and set design was excellent, it has a really good
number of challenging puzzles and the set was enormous. We were lucky enough to
speak with the owner for a little while after our escape – it was VERY clear
that he loved escape rooms (and pigs?) and he was a great host.
Where: 29
Agiou Konstantinou St, Acharnes
Duration: 120 minutes
TERPECA: #20 in 2024 (formerly #8)
Themes: 1
theme (and another underway)
Overall Rating: Brilliant - truly unlike anything we
have played before or since
More details: https://verone.gr/dont-take-a-breath