Omescape: Kingdom of Cats

Purrr… Omescape’s Aldgate escape room sees you trying to flee the land of the giant cats… Get me-owt of here!

We were attracted by this escape room’s refreshingly unusual theme and premise: caught trespassing in the realm of Jasper the cat king, your team has to solve the puzzles he’s set for you in order to escape back to the human world! It certainly makes a change from prison cells, ancient tombs and spaceships.
Although the rooms are a little bare, the decoration that is present is well-finished and corresponds to the theme.
As our host explained to us beforehand, Kingdom of Cats is more about solving puzzles than searching for objects or clues. If you’d rather have your puzzles presented to you in a straightforward way than scour a room for potentially useful objects, this could be the right room for you.
Kingdom of Cats features an interesting use of space: you’ll change direction and move up and down in a cat-like way, and the total space used feels larger than it really is.
The range of puzzle types required us to tune in to different senses to find the solutions.

We thought Kingdom of Cats felt like it needed an extra puzzle or two – it didn’t feel like it was packed with content.
The difficulty levels of the puzzles was all over the place. Sometimes the answer was immediately apparent, but on a couple of occasions the solution seemed opaque even after we’d found it. We felt like we were stopping and starting, and because the game structure was linear we were forced to all stop and start together.
For us, Kingdom of Cats never allowed us to build up momentum and get excited. Maybe it was too linear, or maybe the pace was too slow. We felt it needed a more climactic ending, too.
This is a room which relies heavily on audio recordings for story input and task instructions, and the audio was a bit too quiet for us.
There were no actual cats in this room. OK, we knew there wouldn’t really be any cats. That would be ridiculous, and possibly cruel. This point does not affect our final rating. But still. No kitties!

This room might be a good pick for families with children or escapists who want a room without a dark or sinister theme.

Rating – 6/10

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