I was invited by the team over at Game Over Escape Room Derby to come along with a few friends to test out one of their escape rooms located on Gower Street on the 2nd floor of the Abbotts Hill Chambers building. I'd never been to an escape room before so I jumped at the chance and rounded up 5 other friends to go and see if we could beat the room.

The venue offers 4 different rooms to try to escape. These are: Saw, Jack the Ripper, Mission Impossible and Temple of Montezuma. I was torn between Saw and Jack the Ripper so I asked the manager to book us in for whatever room he thought was best. He decided on the Saw room because that's what he liked the most.

Upon arriving we were greeted by a really friendly staff member. He made us all feel right at home. We were asked to take a seat so here could quickly reset the room. We were only waiting for about 10 minutes before it was time to go in. We were all buzzing with excitement but had no idea what to expect as nearly all of us hadn't been in an escape room before. We were led into the room 1 by 1, each with a blind fold on. I was the first to go in cause, you know, I'm meant to be the blogger. We were each sat down on the floor (except for Joe because he gets a chair for some reason) and had one hand cuffed to the floor. There was almost no movement possible with the real metal cuffs. We were then told to begin once all of us were tied down.

I don't want explain any more about what we did because I don't want to spoil it but my God was it amazing. If I get any requests I may write a complete walk-through of what we did as an optional external link but in this post there are no spoilers. I cannot express enough how much I enjoyed this. It was mentally challenging but not too much at the same time, as shown by our completion time of 57:40 out of a maximum of 1 hour. In addition to this, the Saw room only has a completion rate of around 35% so we were quite proud of ourselves! The fasted time for the Saw room so far is somehow around 36 minutes, with only a 2 player team as well.

I would love to return at some point during the summer and especially around Halloween for another go at getting on the leader board. What I was most impressed with about the escape room was the wide range of types of puzzles and cryptic clues we had to solve. We had to constantly change our way of thinking, from code solving to using our Maths skills, the room had everything. I truly recommend this escape room fro anything. Birthdays, stag and hen dos, even for workplace team building!

Seriously, give this place a try. The rooms range from £15 to £21 per person depending on how many people are in your teams, the more you have the cheaper it is. Teams can be as small as 2 or as big as 6. For groups of 12 or more (where you'll be split between 2 rooms) the price for each person is reduced to £12.50. It was so much fun visiting with a team of 6 where each and every person made a breakthrough for us. I we weren't all there, I don't believe we would have escaped in time. Give this place a try!

Bodega Cantina is a chain of South American style restaurants with venues in Birmingham, Worcester, Leicester and, now, Derby. I was invited to the opening of the new eatery on the 12th of April. Upon arrival in Sadler Gate, Derby we were greeted with a Margarita and began looking around the building. The thing that immediately hit me was the beautiful decor, most of all this artwork on the wall:

From what I recall being told it was created by a local artist in Birmingham. This mural sit underneath a sky-light making it a very gorgeous part of the main room.

We were brought around little tasters of the food Bodega has to offer and my god they were all so amazing. With almost all their dishes being made on site you could really taste the freshness pushing through the flavour.



My favourite dish that I tasted that night was the Pulled Pork tacos, but the real twist was that the meat was marinated in Dr. Pepper. Sounds strange but your questioning would stop when you taste them, absolutely flavourful and tender. Other items that we tasted included nachos, fritas and coxinhas. Every time a new plate of food came around I found it difficult to say no, it tasted so good.

The one thing that caught my eye when looking at the menu were the prices. It's not exactly the cheapest place, especially for a student city. It's a good place to go for a treat every now and but wouldn't be your sort of 'regular' place to go. After talking to the owner of the restaurant he confirmed that they never planned to go for the cheap, student vibe and wanted the place to be seen as a once-in-a-while treat.

In summary, Bodega offers great tasting food combined with a beautiful design. Great for visiting every now and then if you fancy trying something alternative and different. If you want to try this food out for yourself then please making a booking online or call: 01332 224270.

"Faceless" Bug - Assassins Creed Unity

Why would you pre-order a game that you know nothing about when you can easily get it a day or two after the release date? Why not wait a read a few reviews first before you invest your hard earned money in a new game, especially considering how expensive games are beginning to get. There is almost no reason to pre-order a game other than to get it on release day even though you would still be able to walk into a shop and get the game as there would be more then enough copies of the game available.

Pre-ordering games sometimes leads to developers not respecting their fan-base. some developers/publishers could have the mind set of "Well, these people have already bought our game, why do we need to improve it any-more?". This mindset leads to the release of terrible or even unfinished. Less attention to detail on the developer's part can be a consequence of guaranteed income from the already purchased games. Less care and more complacency. 

So I say to you...Stop pre-ordering games! Stand up for your rights as a consumer to have the best possible finished games from developers and publishers and make them have to makes the games as good as possible so more and more players buy them instead of making their money from pre-orders and unfinished games.

Of course some publishes are more ethical than other so it's safer to pre-order from Nintendo who almost always release a semi decent game. Also indie developers are usually safer but some cases have been shockingly unfinished but never should you pre-order from EA. (Need I Tell You Why?)

Thankyou for reading!

What unfinished games have you played?