Coven Escape - Woman in Black Review (Athens)

 

Hi all

The third escape room that we checked out on our November-December 2024 trip to Athens and Spain was Woman in Black at Coven Escape in Athens.

I had heard good things about this room, although I knew it was a scary room. In fact, this was the first truly scary room of our trip. It was at the end of a very long day (which started about 30 hours before when we left Sydney). I remember walking into an unassuming multi-storey residential building in a side street in Athens, entering a lift and then exiting onto a dirty, seemingly disused floor in total darkness. We managed to find a light source and hoped we were in the right location (which we were). The experience began about 15 mins later.

Woman in Black was our 324th room to date. Here is what I thought:

• the beginning of the experience was pretty cool. It involved a calm, interaction with an actor, setting out our mission. That was about where the 'calmness' ended;
• the theming and set quality in this room was phenomenally good. We left the office space with the actor and found ourselves in a small town in the woods. The set was excellent - the quality of the build, the sounds and lighting were all fantastic. A light layer of smoke and brilliant lighting meant that we couldn't see very well, which added to the scare factor;
• we made our way into an old building and that was when we first saw her, the famous Woman in Black. We then spent the next 100 or so minutes running from her, hiding from her, being separated while she magically split into two and terrorised both of us, before managing to get the fuck out of Dodge and returning to the office and once again, taking a breath;
• this was not the scariest room of the trip, but it was up there. I vividly recall at one point being locked in a very small space, only to look up to see, much to my surprise, the Woman in Black looking down at me from above - she was so close her hair/clothing almost touched my face. Sounds like a fun time doesn't it?
• the experience and room flow were both really well-designed. They used loud music and sounds to mask the approaching Woman in Black. They also had us standing in total blackness at one point, where the Woman held small lights pointed at us, which made it incredibly hard for us to see and focus on where the next scare would come from;
• the puzzles in Woman in Black were all pretty strong. What I soon learned on this trip is that you can't really have an escape room that has both super complicated puzzles and actors running around trying (and succeeding) at scaring the shit out of players. Instead, in almost all of the scarier rooms that we played, the puzzles were on the simpler side (and in some cases, there were far fewer puzzles that you would expect in a typical (ie non-scary) escape room). I thought Woman in Black had the right mix of number and difficulty of puzzles for the scares.

You might think from the above review that I did not enjoy Woman in Black. That isn't true - I actually enjoyed myself (at least looking back). In the moment though, it was terrifying and I spent most of the time holding my breath, my whole body fully tensed and just waiting for the next fucking jump scare. I am really glad we played Woman in Black though. The set design and theming were up there with the best I have seen. Woman in Black is currently #151 on the TERPECA list. I think it deserves a much better ranking (and there were certainly other rooms we played in the top 100 that I thought were not in the same league as Woman in Black).

Where:                  Sappho 143 Kallithea, 3rd Floor

Duration:             110 minutes

TERPECA:            #151 in 2024 (formerly #35)

Themes:               1 theme

Overall Rating:    Beautiful set design but incredibly scary

More details:        https://covenescaperooms.gr/