The SAW: Escape Experience London near Tower Hill. A lovely spot for some office bonding?

A PIG-man, a bloody bathtub, and a clown puppet on a bike – these are the elements of SAW: Escape Experience London that my colleagues and I endured one sunny afternoon.

The immersive experience casts you as “golden investors” in a luxury housing development, where the morally bankrupt developers have managed to designate a mere 10 per cent of their property as social housing.

“This never would have happened if they had a good, campaigning local paper,” we muttered to ourselves as we were ushered into the first escape room of the evening. For those of you who haven’t seen any of the Saw franchise, the plot is always the same: Jigsaw, portrayed as a deranged puppet on a tiny bike, kidnaps a group of people who he deems to have committed serious moral wrongs. These poor wrongdoers then have to complete tasks of escalating gore and self-injury to escape Jigsaw’s torture house.

The SAW: Escape Experience is less scary, and you come out with all your limbs.

You and your team-mates are tasked with working your way through a series of escape rooms to save the lives of the developer’s CEO and her personal assistant, Alex. The scariest moment comes when Alex ushers you into a lift and insists you all squash into a square carefully marked out by caution tape.

Suddenly the lights cut out and, in the cloak of darkness, an actor (is it Alex? Is it the recently-maimed CEO?) appears wearing a pig mask.

It was terrifying enough to send me leaping into the arms of one of my team-mates. But, unfortunately, that’s where the scares ended.

The experience lacked the sweat-inducing fear needed to compel you to complete the puzzles within the allotted time, and Jigsaw’s moralising intonements start to feel a bit trying when you find yourself crawling through a maze shouting strangled instructions back to your team-mates who can’t hear you any more.

Ultimately the SAW: Escape Experience is reasonably entertaining, but in need of higher stakes and better scares. Afterwards, we were given blood-red margaritas served via syringe – a pleasingly campy touch on a fundamentally silly afternoon.

• Saw: Escape Experience London is at 1 America Square EC3.