SuffolkNews tries Bury St Edmunds The Evidence Room’s virtual reality escape room with Depths of Osiris

A virtual reality escape room you say? Consider my interest piqued.

It had been some five years since I last did an escape room, so as I ambled down Brentgovel Street, in Bury St Edmunds, on Saturday night to wait outside The Evidence Room for my friends to arrive, my excitement was palpable.

Part of what makes escape rooms so fun is the world they can create inside them. Throw VR into that hat, and the possibilities were endless.

And so myself, Jacob, Ellen and Maddie, led by our incredible host Aaron, marched up the stairs to the venue to see what it was all about.

After some safety explanations (notably the fact, while you would see things in the VR world, they were not there physically, so don’t faceplant by leaning on a rock that does not exist) we made our way inside.

I was not sure what to expect given the tasks would all be in virtual reality, but the site greeting me was just a bog standard, plain, white-painted room with what looked like a bunch of posters all over the walls and some headsets on the floor.

Little did we all know how much we were about to be transported.

Quick one that is worth mentioning as well, which I think summarises what I believe are the endless capabilities of VR, The Evidence Room has NINE, yes, NINE, different VR escape rooms to choose from. And it is all just in that one same space.

So, while we were close to choosing a space station or a pirate-themed game, on the advice of Aaron, we plunged into the Depths of Osiris.

Now, for obvious reasons, I cannot exactly show you what the escape room was like, and nor would I want to give too much away either, however (kudos to Jacob for this) there is a little trailer which I’ve attached above to give you an idea of the challenge we took on.

Depths of Osiris was a nautical-themed escape room, where we took on the mantle of deep-sea explorers searching the lost city of Atlantis to find Osiris’ crown.

Again, another point for VR here, but we had four different rooms to explore and work out in our challenge. Think about how much physical space you would need for that.

I was keenly advised by my boss, who has tried The Evidence Room’s offerings before himself, ‘think outside the box’, and that we really did have to do. Some of the challenges were very difficult, the second room in particular had the four of us shouting and cursing ‘those blasted crabs’ (if you give it a go, you will find out what I mean).

However, thanks to some great intuition from my colleagues, and some lovely (sort of) orchestration from Jacob, we were able to surpass the challenges that faced us. The different levels definitely got progressively difficult, although I would say by the end we’d got the hang of it.

And we were all just wowed with the intuitiveness of it, and how all this was capable in just an empty room with a headset. The amount of times Jacob screamed at the sharks, or we all shouted at the crabs to get away from the items we were collecting, to even being able to ‘splash’ the water we were virtually standing in, it was genuinely incredible.

We completed Depths of Osiris with four minutes to spare on our oxygen meters.

As we removed our headsets and took a breath to calm down, we went over the experience with Aaron, who kindly indulged us in all our mad questions after and explained the finer details, which just added to the whole fun of it.

My advice for anyone who fancies giving The Evidence Room’s VR offering a go? Firstly, dress lightly, as it does get quite warm in there. But secondly, and more importantly, just dive in and ingratiate yourselves, as my word is it worth it.

The VR Escape Room at The Evidence Room is £50 for two people, £66 for three and £84 for four.