A NEW escape room venture - to be enjoyed from the comfort of your own living room - is being launched in time for Halloween.

Cursed Tales Escape Rooms has been started by four friends, and features interactive puzzles, film, and maps.

Husband and wife Lucy and Simon Walker, with a second couple, Clare and Adam Flanagan Walker, put together the first escape room, The Mother.

The Mother puts the player in the role of an 1890s inspector, investigating a haunted mill town.

Lucy said: “The whole point of us doing this was to bring families and friends together who may have felt they were stuck at home. We noticed a gap in the market during lockdown for a home-based escape room and immersive horror storytelling experience.

“So far, we’ve had some great feedback, it was great to see people playing through it and I was blown away by what they had to say and was really pleased.”

“I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if we had got the level of difficulty right but people seemed to really respond to it.”

Lucy added: “We want to showcase the local history of the North West in general by talking to local people and bring some of the area’s rich countryside and architecture into the stories.

“I’m a very creative person, we’re all tremendous escape room enthusiasts, and I’m really keen to see where we can go with this, by merging genres and getting some really interesting stories.

“Our first escape room is called The Mother, very influenced by film, and features an interactive map and clues that you must follow in order to set the mother free.”

Lucy went on to explain that the team plan to film around forests in the North West, taking advantage of the natural scenery to create as immersive an experience as possible.

Clare added: “We’ve been really excited to see people enjoy themselves when we test the games out on people.

“We never know how they will react but so far the response has been very positive.

“The next one will be called The Forest and I’m very excited to see what people think, because it’s going to be set in modern times and will be a slightly harder difficulty.

“It’s been quite a whirlwind of ideas and concepts and the way that we have supported each other and we are always excited to work together everyday.”

For more information, or to pre-order The Mother, you can go online and visit https://cursed-tales.com/