An Immersive "Sherlock" Escape Room Game Is Coming To London

Exclusive: Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat consulted on and helped cowrite the experience, which will open in London in October this year.

An immersive Sherlock escape room will open in a central London location later this year.

BBC / Sherlock

The escape room company Time Run is creating the experience. Sherlock creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and the show's executive producer Sue Vertue were approached by Time Run with the idea, and currently work as consultants for it. It's been in the works for more than a year.

"It fits Sherlock," Moffat told BuzzFeed News. "Sherlock in the original stories are little puzzles, that's what they are. So it is a good match for us, and it would feel properly like the show."

Here's the concept of the game: Sherlock (Benedict Cumberbatch) is out of action. Fans of the show will be able to step into his shoes and solve problems against the clock in teams of four or five players, in various rooms that you will recognise from the show. The 90-minute experience, spread over 17,000 square feet, will feature specifically made video and audio of characters from the show, with their lines written by Moffat and Gatiss. Tickets will be available for £54.

"It's what you want to do when you originally read the stories: be Sherlock, or certainly try and make deductions," Gatiss told BuzzFeed News. "And of course in real life you rarely get to do that, so it's a chance to do that."

The experience will be set in the present day, after the most recent episode, "The Final Problem", because, Moffat said, "We haven't ended Series 4 on a devastating cliffhanger."

BBC / Sherlock

"Normally when we do things like this, we have to try and explain where it fits into the previous episodes because Sherlock is 'dead', or he has been recalled to England, or whatever," Moffat said. "But this time Sherlock and John [Martin Freeman] are in Baker Street solving crimes. That's what they are doing."

There won't be much in the way of new plotlines for Sherlock fans. Time Run came up with the concepts of the games, rather than Moffat and Gatiss, who provided feedback. Some of the original ideas "were a bit too fantastical", Gatiss said. "There was one which was steering too far into sci-fi at one point."

They also felt that people would want to get into these games as quickly as possible. "If you have to sit there and watch a 30-minute video of things you already know and then you have 10 minutes to play the game, you get a bit cross," Gatiss said.

They want the games to be played not only by fans but also by those who may never have seen the show before, so no prerequisite knowledge will be needed. "You could walk in never having seen it," Moffat said.

The creators also noted that "The Final Problem" contained puzzles and games, although Moffat and Gatiss reassured us the escape room experience won't be as dark as that episode of the show.

BBC / Sherlock

"Although it is not the actual plot, the last episode we did, in the asylum at Shenford, it's already a series of tests, so we were kind of in the same area anyway," said Gatiss.

But how will Moriarty (Andrew Scott) be involved in the game, considering his character is dead? When I asked this, a publicist said I would need to "play the game to take part".

Then Moffat pointed at the poster for the event, which features an image of Moriarty, and said: "Well, he's on that. You’re just going to have to wait."

Sherlock / Time Run

To find out more about Sherlock: The Game Is Now, visit the Time Run website.