Review: Prison Island Horror Story (London)
Updated: 15 minutes ago
This competitive game experience gets a limited-time Halloween makeover on select dates this October.
Image: Prison Island
As competitive gaming experience Prison Island London prepares to celebrate its first birthday, the corridors and cells of its Holloway Road venue have found themselves playing host to the ghosts of several former prisoners as part of Prison Island Horror Story - a limited-time Halloween re-theme that introduces potential jump scares and an extra layer of tension to an already intense, fast-paced hour.
Prison Island's elevator pitch is pretty simple: Every team of 2-5 players has 60 minutes to tackle as many or as few of Prison Island's 31 challenges as they like, in any order they like, in order to earn as many points as possible. Each room can take up to 3 minutes to complete, and groups are free to repeat any challenge as many times as they like. With such a big line-up though, those hoping to tackle all of them won't have much time spare for do-overs.
Photo: Fever
Prison Island's challenges vary hugely from room to room and test everything from balance and agility to lateral thinking skills and communication. Many of the cells contain physical challenges, which will have guests either climbing, balancing, crawling or running, but there's also a healthy number of games that require more logical and lateral thinking and don't rely on strength or accuracy.
On the outside of each cell is a small panel, which provides information on minimum player numbers, the game's intensity and a vague one-line description that alludes to the game. While it's all useful information, a significant amount of the enjoyment derived from taking part in Prison Island comes from not knowing what awaits on the other side of the cell doors.
Photo: Fever
Once inside, groups will often need to work out exactly what is required of them, as the clock is already ticking. Those who are really stuck can glean some additional information about each room's given objective by shining the small UV light they were given upon arrival on the back of the cell's door to reveal some handwritten hints, which have presumably been left behind by former inmates that now roam the halls, but teams are otherwise on their own to work it out through trial and error.
Without wishing to spoil any of the challenges for would-be-prisoners, some of our personal highlights included Butchers Lane, which gives you a short amount of time to memorise and answer questions about the details of a crime scene; The Prison, which had us step into the shoes of Andy Dufresne and escape a prison cell on our hands and knees, and Dive, which has dozens of exercise balls filling the room and blocking a series of buttons on the walls and floor that need pressing to score points. It says a lot about our performance that across all three of these rooms, we only got the maximum points in one of them, but that's beside the point...
Photo: Fever
As part of the Horror Story re-theme, Prison Island's lobby has been redecorated to feature a huge amount of Halloween decorations; there's extra theming - including the mandatory spiders, cobwebs and bodies wrapped in plastic sheets - throughout the experience's corridors, and a small cast of roaming actors stalk groups, interact one-on-one and act in a vaguely menacing way throughout the evening. Their costumes are all off-the-shelf, and several are based on modern-day horror films like The Purge and Terrifier, but sadly give off the impression they arrived in the same online order as the lobby's decorations.
Plenty of groups during our visit were screaming their heads off whenever they were approached, so for some the addition of these live performers will deliver all kinds of scares, but for us, they were basically as scary as anyone you'd see in Central London on Halloween night who had made a half-decent attempt at sorting out a costume.
Photo: Fever
The only scares that really got us during our time at Prison Island Horror Story were when these roaming actors had snuck into cells ahead of us entering and positioned themselves out of sight. There's an added bit of tension that arises whenever you enter a cell off the back of that knowledge, but it was a way off being a properly terrifying experience.
As for the difficulty level of Prison Island's 30+ challenges, it varies massively from cell to cell. While some games are self-explanatory and easy to score big points on (Basket has you throwing basketballs into hoops from behind bars, and Laser Gun consists of shooting light-up targets with guns mounted to the floor), others are far more abstract and would realistically require a couple of failed attempts to master.
The physical nature of some other games will likely prevent certain groups from succeeding, even if the objective is clear, with Cellblock North and Green Mile both requiring considerable effort to score even just a few points.
Photo: Fever
While the horror elements never quite match the intensity of the challenges themselves, Prison Island's commitment to providing a hectic and fast-paced competitive gaming experience means that the 60 minutes guests get to score as many points as possible are enjoyable, even if the promised horror never quite materialises.
★★★½
[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]
Prison Island Horror Story runs at 5-7 Hornsey Street near Holloway Road from 16th to 31st October on select dates. Tickets are priced from £31.90 per person. For more information and to book tickets, visit feverup.com
