From classroom
to locked room.
Before Lock and Code, there were lesson plans. Founder Matt taught for years before swapping the classroom for something a little more theatrical: a small room on the ground floor of a business centre in Weston-super-Mare, with a story he wanted to lock people inside for an hour.
That first room was The Last Victim. It opened in March 2016. It was meant to be one room. It became a venue. Then a second venue. Then a family.
What we actually
care about.
Story first. If a room's story isn't strong enough to make a stranger care after a single sentence, we don't open the door. The puzzle is how you reveal the story. Never the point of it.
We sweat the props. Real period-correct objects, custom electronics, smells, lighting cues, hand-built furniture. If you'd believe it on a film set, you'll believe it in our rooms.
And we run them. There's a host. They watch every game. They give nudges only when you actually need them. The pacing of an hour matters. That's the difference between you talking about it for a week and you talking about it for a year.
Three doors.
Twelve stories.
Today the family runs three locations across Somerset and Devon. Weston-super-Mare for family fantasy and tech thrillers. Taunton for gritty, story-driven mysteries inside an old paper mill. And in September 2023, Red House Mysteries joined the family in Exeter, bringing cinematic adventures that play like films you walk through.
Twelve rooms in total. Every one of them written, designed, and built in-house. Every one of them an hour you won't forget.