To all readers I will first respond to this review as if it was genuine - customer service in this industry is paramount. I will then provide reasons why this is highly suspect, something we have been a target for on multiple instances (and Tripadvisor has been given a 23-page document with evidence supporting this). Our customers' enjoyment is the highest priority (other than health and safety) at Cryptology. This is why we pay particular attention to clean toilets, cleaning regimes in the games and common areas, and regular (at least monthly) tasks to check the upkeep of the games. Not every game goes well and we document reasons why this could be the case and make Improvements on our system so it does not happen to future guests. Your review does not mention which game you played, I can only reassure you that these checks have not been missed, and new staff have been trained on the importance of reporting even minor issues with the game. Escape Rooms should be designed so you can solve them by yourself. We do not sit back and watch groups struggle, your enjoyment is what you have paid for and our staff are trained to deliver this. With succinct feedback we can further extend the training and onboarding sessions of our staff. Cryptology uses world-leading Tempus Escape Room Management Software. This lets us break down every game played in one of our branches. We log team size, team type, escape time, member of staff running the game, every clue given, every event (puzzle) solved by timestamp. We have a lot of data to help us with issues like you have mentioned. I have filtered all family groups over the last 2 months, I have review the clue count, the clue count per GM, and sifted through quite a lot of data. I simply cannot, based on your review, identify which game this is - let alone which room. "Help was too slow". I can see the clue count for every game. The point of any escape room is for you as a team to solve puzzles, not our staff solve this for you. In fact over-cluing is a metric we keep our eye on. Our software lets us review our staff's clue rate and success rate in each game. Cryptology Nottingham is quite difficult for us to fail a game, because we have unique (and guests who have visited us understand this) scenarios where the goal is not to escape, giving all teams a feeling of variable success rather than a binary pass/fail. You state you are a family who played whatever game you played here - families bounce ideas off each other and we won't provide clues unless necessary. Out of all of the escape room game in Nottingham, 75% of ours have a near 90%+ success rate because of the unique story/mechanic of the game. Without knowing which game you played makes it difficulty to justify the low clue rate you claim. We understand customers won't come back to play our games again (however Daylight Robbery and Dreamscape people do, and the game mechanic we mention really highlights this as a reason that these two games are award-winning). "room looks worn needs refurb" I have already written about our games checking procedures, so about looking worn - I can see evidence from my management team that these tasks are completed, and as we are building two new games I am personally in the branch a lot and I have better comments to make on this, as I am not there all the time where you can become used to the look of everything. Our games are not worn. "features not working" Our Tempus Improvements system logs every failure we find in the game, I can see every report and the actions taken. If there is anything game-breaking if they cannot be fixed, teams are advised and a solution reached. This has not been the case for a very long time, as we keep on top of everything, helped by the Tempus software. "help was too slow", "needs refurb", "spoilt the fun" are all terms we have read more than once on review platforms. They are also vague enough that it shows that this review has likely not experienced our game, as there is no details given at all. This review was made by an account opened in August 2021 - but no reviews were given. They have chosen to use this account to make a review nearly 2 years on. They have called themselves EscapeFreak, but have a randomised username. A neighbouring escape room which unfortunately closed down (and we sent customers there way when they tried to book when we were full) made multiple accounts to give themselves 5* reviews, "no math combinations" was a term given on multiple reviews and more importantly, review responses from the owner. This reeks of an unused account now recycled to diminish our rating. It is sad we are having to go through this process again. If an Escape Enthusiast were to leave comments, they would so so to the management or company's inbox. Not a damning, vague review on a review platform. This is a long read, so if you have made it this far, thanks. Why respond this way to what could be a genuine complaint? We've had reviews on various platform worded very similar to this - no substance, and most important of all - nothing we can learn and improve our games or our staff's training with. We encourage this reviewer to contact us, so we can provide succinct feedback should this review be genuine - why wouldn't we want to improve? But, it has given an opportunity to show our guests the processes we have in place to show that customer enjoyment of our games is important, and why the Tempus technology we use helps us maintain, improve, and deliver this.