Lady Chastity’s Reserve, The Four Thieves Pub – Review

Handmade Mysteries

4 stars

For Lady Chastity’s Reserve, 2-5 players are locked in a small dusty room fully decked out as if a key has turned and preserved a time capsule to times gone by. You have one hour to search for clues, solve puzzles and uncover the mystery of fabled historical hedonist Lady Chastity in order to unlock a bottle of her prized red wine as your trophy whilst eerie (and rather funny) guardian of the room Gabriel keeps a close eye on the proceedings.

The past two adventure games I’ve partaken in (Time Run and Hint Hunt) have been on a fairly grand scale and taken place across room after room of puzzles. This game is done on a much smaller scale but still packs a punch in terms of solving clues, searching for answers and unlocking a treasure at the end.

The challenges are good – and the aforementioned Gabriel is available upon request to help solve clues. There’s a hole in the door in which his head pops through on occasion to check on your progress and offer tips and tricks, something which is genuinely appreciated although often terrifying when you aren’t expecting it to happen. Similarly terrifying are the jets of smoke from the wardrobe when you begin to get close to solving a puzzle – but they add to a really delightful feeling of unease as you get closer to the treasured wine.

There’s something very clever in this one about how clearly the stages of ‘unlocking’ the treasure is done so that you can time yourself reasonable well throughout and it’s a very intelligent set up over all.

So – did we make it out with the wine? Of course we did – although it was no mean feat. Gabriel estimates that there’s a 60% success rate for completing the challenge in the allotted hour and after we request specifics, we’re told that we completed it in the 23^rd fastest time out of over 300 (as of end of July 2015.) We’ll take that – and we’ll also take the bottle of wine we won at the end.

Lady Chastity’s Reserve is a fun and lively adventure – and one that is very reasonably priced. I doubt you’ll beat my quick problem solving skills, but it appears to be on until October 31^st – so I recommend you give it a try.

Book to visit Lady Chastity’s Reserve here – and make sure to allow some time for the excellent Four Thieves pub while you’re there – especially if you need to drink a bottle of rather good red wine. You can also follow Handmade Mysteries on twitter @HM_Mysteries.