Moonbase Mersey is open: ten players, one lying robot

After eighteen months of building, rewiring and arguing about the colour of a spacesuit, Moonbase Mersey is open. It’s our first room for up to ten players, and our first room with a villain who talks back.

The story

The year is 2091. Mersey Station, humanity’s first lunar outpost run from Liverpool, has gone quiet. Your crew is sent to find out why. The station computer, CORA, is very polite, very helpful and lying about almost everything.

What’s new

Four things you won’t have seen in our other rooms:

• Two teams in one room, working on separate puzzles that only make sense together

• A computer you can talk to, who answers (not always honestly)

• The biggest single set we’ve built, with an airlock that actually seals

• A finale that needs everyone in the room to do their bit at once

It’s brilliant for work dos, big birthdays and families who like to bicker. Fear level is low: a few alarms, some flashing lights and one robot with an attitude.

“We tested it on our own families. CORA made my mum cry with laughter and my brother cry with rage.”

Dev, tech and lighting

We built most of it ourselves, as usual. The airlock door took Tom a whole month and two attempts, and the station’s control desk is made from an old church organ we found on a reclamation site in Stockport. If you press the right keys in the right order, something happens. We’ll leave it at that.

CORA was the hardest part. Writing a computer that lies convincingly but fairly meant playtesting the room nineteen times with friends, families and one very suspicious accountant. Every lie CORA tells can be caught, if you’re paying attention.

Book it

Moonbase Mersey runs every day from 12:00. Groups of seven to ten get the room for the same price per room as everywhere else, which works out as the best value in the building. The current record is 44:18, set by a team called Space Cadets. Good luck beating it.