The Cellar

This is a review of the Escape Room “The Cellar” offered by ANTcollectief in Gent, Belgium.
  • ⭐️ 6.8/10
  • 🌡 Difficult
  • ⏳ 60 Minutes
  • 👥 3 – 7 Person

The Eskimofabriek in Ghent is a textile factory that has been completely renovated and now functions as an event center and business village, where a successful symbiosis between sport, food, work and celebration has become reality. There are plenty of parking spaces on the premises.

The Cellar is located, as the name suggests, in a basement vault of the Eskimofabriek. The story of how the founders of ANTcollectief, more or less by chance, came across these premises is quite interesting.

After a short briefing by our friendly game master, and her explicit hint that nothing down here is as it seems, the door of the cellar closes and we inspect the surroundings. The furnishings are minimalist, and at first glance there is nothing unusual to discover. Except for one piece of furniture, which is obviously our primary task in this game phase.

The beginning is search intensive. The clues and objects are very well hidden! For my taste partially already on the border to unfair. When 5 pairs of eyes have to search so long time in a manageable room without success, inevitably some frustration arises, and so we unfortunately had to request tips several times already in the starting phase.

Luckily, as the game progressed, something like game flow came up and you were finally allowed to combine and puzzle again. I found a special mechanical puzzle as well as the transition to another game area quite cool and elaborate. Because of the many search components The Cellar is certainly to be classified as difficult. After about 56 minutes (I think with four tips), the secrets of the cellar were revealed.

Heiner Stepen

Heiner Stepen