Captivate Escape Rooms

Captivate runs eight escape rooms, two of them built for children, which makes it one of the few places in Singapore where a family can all play rather than the adults playing while somebody waits outside. Hansel and Gretel is the gentlest way in — plenty of clues, one red herring, and hands-on puzzles a child can actually solve.

The rest cover a lot of ground: a prison break, a CSI investigation, a diamond heist, a murder on a train, an Alice in Wonderland room and a Wednesday Addams one. Rooms take two to twelve players across an hour after the briefing, and one person aged twelve or over has to be in the room. Eight rooms in one place also means a large group can split across several games at the same time, which is what the room count is for.

The puzzles are logical and solvable, and the hosts are quick with a hint when you call for one. The sets are the trade-off: plainer decoration than the operators who spend on cinematic build, and some fixtures have taken a few years of enthusiastic players. Quality varies more between the eight rooms than the average suggests, so it is worth asking at booking which one is running best. It is on the sixth floor of Singapore Shopping Centre on Clemenceau Avenue, near Dhoby Ghaut.