Hi everyone
The eighth room on our May/June 2024 child-free trip to Holland was Pray at
Escape Room Katwijk, which is located about a 40 minute drive south-west of
Amsterdam (or about 60-75 minutes by train).
I had learned about Pray from other escape room enthusiasts
(I always ask Heiner Stepen for room recommendations when I head to Europe and
this was one of the newer rooms that he said was a must play). For those of you
who don’t know Heiner, he runs the Escape Roomers blog (https://escaperoomers.de/) and I am pretty
sure he holds the record for having played the most escape rooms of anyone in
the world (he has played more than 3,000 rooms at the time of writing this
review). Unbelievable (I know), but true.
Pray proved difficult to book into, not because of their
booking system, but because they were booked out during our trip. I contacted
the owner, Johan, who kindly opened up a slot for us.
Pray was our 298th escape room and here is what I thought:
- we
ended up taking an uber from Amsterdam to Katwjik, which took about 35-40
minutes. Escape Room Katwjik is located in an industrial estate. We had
luggage with us, which we stored in the main reception building and then
we headed outside to wait for our cue that our room was ready for us. A
quick note on this aspect – we had to climb a long, external staircase to
play this room, so less-abled players should be aware of this when
booking;
- Pray
is marketed as a scary room. At the time that I played Pray, it was
probably one of the scarier rooms that I had played. After having since
played rooms in Athens and Spain, I have a little more perspective on what
a scary room is. According to TERPECA, Pray is “passively scary, which
means that the game uses darkness, intimidation, simulated danger, hide
and seek and other techniques to create anxiety, but doesn’t startle
players much”. I think that is pretty accurate. Whilst there are
interactions with a character during the experience, we were not being
actively chased or touched by any characters;
- Pray
is more focused on scary music and dark settings, with a few jump scares
thrown in for fun. I think the anticipation was ultimately scarier than
the reality in Pray, at least for me. I would rate it at about a 4 out of
10 for scary factor;
- the
set and theming is beautifully done in Pray. The village scene and the
various buildings within the village were incredibly thematic – we really
did forget that we were in an industrial warehouse building throughout our
experience;
- as
seems to be the case with most scary rooms, there were moments of
separation and ‘courage tests’ in Pray (where I was the ‘lucky’ chosen one
who was separated for a period from the group), but it was fun and in fact
allowed me to solve puzzles that the rest of my group weren’t able to
access;
- the puzzles
in Pray were, on balance, on the easier side. There was also a nice
variety to the puzzles, with a mix of clever tech and more straight
forward manual puzzles;
- after
our experience, we were able to sit down with Johan and discuss his room
and escape rooms generally across Europe. It is common in The Netherlands
to have a drink after the experience. Johan’s integration of his bar area
within the Pray world was my favourite integration I have seen to date.
We all really enjoyed Pray. One of our team members doesn’t
like scary rooms but she did pretty well with Pray. The main drawcard for Pray
is the theming and quality of the sets, which really are beautiful. Pray is a
new room and scored the very impressive spot of #13 on the TERPECA ranking. I
think it is well-deserved.
Where:
Naast Gelegen Gebouw, 2223GG Katwijk (Z-H)
Duration: 80
minutes
Themes:
3 themes
TERPECA: #13 in
2024
Price:
190€ per
team of 4
Overall Rating: Phenomenal theming and great puzzles
More details: https://escaperoomkatwijk.com/
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