What’s the best way to celebrate Mother’s Day? Chocolates? Breakfast in bed? Flowers? Meal out? No. It’s a trip to Twilight Manor.

As Linda’s recovery from her hip replacement operation continues apace, we decided to have a family day out to try a new escape room – Twilight Manor. Hosted by Cluetopia, this is a ‘haunted house’ style room housed in an old building down near Ipswich Marina.

From the blurb:

You managed to buy Twilight Manor at a fraction of its true cost. You knew it needed some work. However, you didn’t know it was HAUNTED! A local urban legend states the only way to rid the house of its unwanted guests is to find the ancient Talisman, hidden somewhere deep within the manor. No one who has entered has survived longer than an hour. Can you find the Talisman and rid the Manor of its nasty spirits?

Obviously I can’t say much about the specifics, but this is a quite large, multi-room affair. There is a good mix of simple and difficult puzzles and many of them require good teamwork and timing to solve.

A picture of Ben, Linda and Malachi after playing the Twilight Manor escape room at Cluetopia Ipswich

The theming itself isn’t too bad and the room is clean and well-maintained. The horror theme means that you will encounter some blood and body parts, but they are relatively tame compared to what you encounter on the European mainland!

Twilight Manor is reputed to be one of the hardest rooms at Cluetopia Ipswich so less experienced teams may want to take a fourth member (you can have up to eight).

There are also a few ‘scary’ moments but I was so focused on the puzzles I missed them all!

Did we escape? Yes
Did we have fun? Yes
Mobility rating: 2.5 out of 5 (there are a few stairs in this multi-room game)
Price: £72.00
Would we recommend? Yes
Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Linda and I have done a few rooms at another Cluetopia location (Clacton on Sea) and enjoyed them both. The games masters are always very friendly and helpful and take great pride in doing a good job for the players.

Other important Twilight Manor stats
Number of players: 3
Time limit: 60 minutes
Time remaining: 3 minutes
Number of clues: 1
Live actors: No
Cluetopia difficulty rating: 4 out of 5

It’s also worth noting that there is no parking at the Cluetopia escape rooms, although there are two car parks nearby. Just be warned that it’s not cheap (£3.20 for two hours).