Truro’s Enigma Escape Cornwall named best in the UK

A husband and wife team working out of a basement in Truro have just been told they run the best escape room in the country. Enigma Escape Cornwall‘s Fear of the Unknown has beaten more than 2,000 eligible escape rooms across the UK to take the top spot in the first ever UK Escape Room Awards, voted for entirely by members of the public.

Voted number one out of 2,000-plus rooms

Every escape room currently operating in the UK, and there are more than 2,000 of them, was eligible for a vote. Only people who have played 50 or more escape rooms could cast one, which narrowed the electorate down to genuine enthusiasts rather than casual visitors. From that vote, 162 finalists went through for a chance at the title.

The results were revealed live on YouTube at 8pm on Friday 4 September, when Fear of the Unknown was named the outright winner, ahead of every other finalist in the country.

“We were completely overwhelmed, gobsmacked and in total shock when we saw the result,” said Oli and Megan Eastwood-Wright, who own and run Enigma Escape Cornwall. “All of our hard work had paid off, and to have such amazing recognition from escape room fans across the country made us unbelievably proud. For a small husband and wife team in the far extremities of the country, with very little experience, winning this award for our very first passion project really is the sort of thing dreams are made of. This is and will certainly remain as one of our biggest life achievements.”

📷Credit: Imaginink_Media

From games leader to shop owner

Oli spent six years working as a games leader for the previous owners of the Truro branch, Eureka Escape, before buying the business outright in September 2023. That is when Enigma Escape Cornwall was born. Megan left her job with the NHS to join full time in October 2025, as demand grew.

The pair took the business on with three existing games already running, Don’t Panic, Life After Death and The Bletchley Test. Oli had already had a hand in the last two, designing the story and puzzles for Life After Death and helping build The Bletchley Test, his first taste of the design side of the industry.

Taking stock of their own pet hates as escape room players, Oli and Megan decided their focus would be high-quality set pieces, real immersion, and sets kept properly maintained rather than left to wear.

A love letter to Lovecraft

Life After Death closed in April 2024 to make room for something bigger. Fear of the Unknown was the couple’s first build from scratch, and it took 13 months to finish.

Oli’s love of physical, hands-on game design and live action role play games such as Call of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror, combined with Megan’s wish for a strong collectible element, produced several game mechanics neither of them had come across elsewhere. It was a significant investment of time and money on an unusual premise for a debut build, with no guarantee it would land. Oli was still working a second job at Lidl throughout, and Megan was in her NHS role full time, so the build happened in whatever hours the couple could find around running the business and holding down paid work.

Oli studied media at college but spent more than 20 years working in retail before Fear gave him the chance to put that creative side to use. He often calls the finished room “a love letter to Lovecraft”, and the story leans into it. Set in Arkham, Massachusetts, in October 1928, players are hired by the fictional Miskatonic University to enter a shunned house in the city’s oldest quarter, on the trail of relics stolen from the university’s vaults by a dangerous cult, racing to recover them before doom catches up with them.

Neither Oli nor Megan had any formal training in building an experience like this, and taught themselves everything from carpentry and laying floors to tech, decorating, voice artistry and sourcing props, with plenty of help from family and friends along the way. Partway through the build, skilled carpenter and interior designer Dave Sampson came on board after visiting Oli in the basement out of curiosity, and much of the finished set is his work. The room is now brought to life day to day by games leaders Imy, Loey and Emily, with Imy running things as site lead since the very beginning.

Fear of the Unknown opened to the public in May 2025 and was, in the couple’s words, a resounding success from day one.

No clock, three endings, and a rat who takes silver

Fear of the Unknown runs for 90 minutes rather than the traditional 60, and deliberately has no countdown clock. Taking the time pressure away, Oli and Megan say, makes for more focused play and deeper immersion, with a story-driven narrative that unfolds in chapters and pauses for players to gather their thoughts.

There are three different endings, decided by how much of three separate sets of collectible items a group finds along the way. One player described the collecting side of it as a “collectathon”. There is no clue system either, which can make it a genuine challenge for less experienced players, but there is also no way to lose. Every door eventually opens and the story keeps moving regardless of how well a group is doing, so every group gets to experience the whole set.

That combination makes the room replayable, something Enigma Escape Cornwall says is almost unheard of in the industry, and plenty of groups have come back to chase the collectibles or the ending they missed first time round. It is stacked with Lovecraft references for fans of the author, but built to work just as well for players who have never heard of him. There is a trading element too. Cross the paws of a creature called Brown Jenkin with silver, and he will hand over tools and useful objects to help with the puzzles. The room is suitable for ages 12 and up, and for groups of two to six players.

Recognition beyond Cornwall

The UK Escape Room Awards win is not the first time Fear of the Unknown has been singled out. In August 2026 it picked up a Golden Lock Award from US site Room Escape Artist, one of only two UK rooms to receive the award that year. In October 2025 it was nominated in TERPECA, an international enthusiasts’ choice award, the only room in Cornwall to be nominated. Review the Room, a UK escape room blog, gave it the site’s highest score of 5 out of 5 lightbulbs, and enthusiast Mark Greenhalgh, who has played more than 1,000 rooms, wrote about his visit after a recent trip to Cornwall.

Customer reviews on Morty, Google and Tripadvisor tell a similar story. “Fear is genius,” reads one. “Hands down one of the best escape rooms in the UK, I was blown away,” says another. A third simply calls it “an absolute triumph of a room”.

For Oli and Megan, the win means more than a trophy on the mantelpiece. “The hope is that this award will put Cornwall on the escape room map and result in an increase in players travelling from further afield to see what we have created,” they said. “We really believe that Cornwall and Devon have some of the best experiences around, and we want to share this with the UK.”