28 Leicester Square

[h3]Recommended: No – But Only If You’re Over 12 and Expect Actual Horror[/h3] I went into 28 Leicester Square thinking I’d signed up for a classy Victorian escape room with a side of light survival horror. What I actually got was a polite, slightly awkward guided tour of a mad scientist’s house where the biggest threat was repetitive leg day and my own lack of common sense for one puzzle. You play as the world’s most optimistic Dr's assistant. The good doctor offers suspiciously excellent pay, and you – despite finding increasingly concerning notes from every previous hire – decide the best career move is to keep fetching ingredients for him. I kept waiting for my character to develop a single survival instinct. He never did. Bless his cotton lab coat, the man treats ominous bloodstained notes like motivational posters. The core loop is classic escape-room logic: read a note, solve a modest puzzle, unlock the next room of the house, then sprint back across the map because you forgot one key item three rooms ago. It is not a long game. It feels longer than it has any right to because you will spend an decent amount of time power-walking past the same stacked chairs and potted plant while muttering to yourself about the back and forth. My personal record for unnecessary suffering came in the Safe Room square puzzle. I stared at that thing like it was the final boss of abstract algebra. My wife wandered over, sipped her tea, tilted her head, and solved it in roughly the time it takes to microwave popcorn. I have never been more in love and more humiliated at the same time. Ten out of ten marriage, two out of ten puzzle-solving dignity. The “survival” elements are charmingly toothless. Enemies exist, technically. They lurch around if you trigger them, but they’re easily bullied by basic light and a healthy respect for shadows. I was handed a stun weapon midway through and immediately felt guilty for how little I used it. It was like being given a lightsaber and choosing to fight exclusively with passive-aggressive sighs. I never once felt in danger; I felt mildly inconvenienced by things that go bump in the night. Graphically it’s clean and atmospheric in that cozy, candle-lit Victorian way. Sound design is fine, no voices or catchy music, though. Controls are smooth, which is important when you’re doing laps around the same hallway for the twelfth time. The story wraps up neatly with a newspaper article that made me chuckle, but by that point I was mostly relieved the house tour had finally ended. Would I recommend it? Not really. Not to anyone hunting for tense horror, clever puzzles, or meaningful survival gameplay. It is, however, the perfect game to hand to a curious ten-year-old who likes reading clues and clicking on things. They’ll feel smart, they’ll finish it in an afternoon, and they won’t spend an hour stuck on one square like a certain grown man who shall remain nameless. My completely made-up but deeply felt scoring system: Overall: 50/100 Gameplay: 11/25 Story: 8/15 Controls: 14/15 Graphics: 7/15 Sound: 8/10 Intangibles: 1/10 (that one perfect wife-save moment) Replay: 0/5 Challenge: 1/5 This is a game where I wish they had a neutral review option. If you’re looking for something short, light, and mildly spooky for the kids, this will do nicely. Everyone else can keep scrolling. The doctor’s paying well, but even good wages can’t buy tension.