Located roughly within a ten minute walk from London's King Cross station is probably one of the most unique escape rooms i've ever done, clueQuest. From the outside it just looks like any other shop front on the high street but once you enter you are transported to this bright, colourful and artistic hub that is just fabulous. The first thing you will notice is the absolutely stunning mural. Its gorgeous and sets up the tone for the rooms that follow. I only did one from on this visit and was accompanied by Tim from ScareTour and Adam from The Joy Sequence. Like with all escape rooms, you have a set time to escape (1 hour for this one) to solve all the clues and puzzles.
But did we manage to work together to escape? The mission was simple:
"Professor BlackSheep is back again to destroy mankind as we know it by turning us all into complacent sheep! And this time he is not alone - he’s got an evil side-kick and together they have built a dangerous device: the SheepMutator."
I'm going to start by saying we were incredibly hot due to the warm weather so our brains weren't working properly before we even arrived, so we had trouble to get into the swing of it. Usually Tim and I work really well together and have solved many escape rooms just the two of us, but Revege of the Sheep had us using all our brain power and even with the help of Adam we still needed a few hints. The puzzles used a mix of different media, from physical to augmented reality and the fact we accidentally got a mini jump scare from a shutter door opening added to tension even if it was hilarious. The room itself contains some fabulous artwork as well references to British history around sheep. In the room itself there is only really 3 main focal points, a black and white checkered box, a post box and a fire hydrant. That fire hydrant will always be the bane of my existance and I will explain why later. Without spoiling any of the puzzles, the post box has some clever puzzles that at the time frustrated but upon reflection were really clever. The box was used for the augmented reality section and without spoiling, it’s so good!
As mentioned above there was only one thing in this room that frustrated me and that was the fire hydrant. Spoilers to a puzzle coming so skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want spoilers. The light reflecting the images onto the umbrella which you then had to work out the order to get the code for the padlock. Don't get me wrong, its a clever idea, but it was hard to see clearly what ones we were trying to look for in the book. I don't know if its intentionally done to be difficult to see (Or its an age thing from me) but the only niggle I have is that I wish they were a bit clearer so you could make them out better, but we solved it, eventually, so it really is only a tiny niggle.
Despite the niggle, the whole room was so much fun and utterly enjoyable and I genuinely can't wait to get back to experience the other rooms on offer, especially CQ Origenes! But to answer the question, yes we managed to escape, just. I think we had like 1 or 2 minutes left at most. We'd like to say a huge thank you to the team at clueQuest and we will hopefully see you soon!
ClueQuest currently have 4 live escape rooms, 8 Print - Cut - Escape at home missions and 3 VR missions. Their in person rooms and VR rooms cost £25pp off peak and £30pp Peak. There print at home missions are £15 if you print at home, £25 if they print and post it or £28 if you want it gift wrapped. For more information and to book tickets you can visit the clueQuest website:- https://cluequest.co.uk/escape-room-london
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