clueQuest: Operation Blacksheep (London)

A great room with some nice added extras

Agents, beware! Launching the missile into the satellite will trigger the command center’s self-destruct sequence. You will have only 60 Minutes to destroy the satellite until it goes online and then to evacuate the command center before it self-destructs. You and your team will be sent behind enemy lines with the mission to infiltrate into the Professor’s command center, hack into his system and obtain the missile codes in order to destroy the satellite once and for all.

It’s rare that you find work colleagues that you want to hang out with outside of work, and when you do you have to work out what you can do that won’t be awkward. Fortunately that’s what escape rooms were for! A bit of a double date, Liz and I were joined by a colleague of mine and her husband to attempt Operation Blacksheep. I’d heard good things about the rooms at clueQuest so this seemed like a good choice to try and get them hooked.

The whole operation is very slick and has a very corporate feel about it, but I think they’re trying to appeal to the corporate market as much as the average Joe. When we arrived there were a number of larger group in the waiting room but there was still room for us to sit and wait for our GM to greet us. Once he appeared he took us downstairs, gave us a briefing and then showed us to the room.

The first section of the room was pretty small and I wasn’t sure what would come next. It took a couple of minutes to get our bearings but soon we were looking at everything and trying to find links. Fortunately my work colleague and her husband are pretty much geniuses so we blitzed through this room in no time at all.

The room was well staged and the puzzles were done in such a way that they flowed, but at the same time they weren’t obvious and you had to remember things you had seen earlier in the room. I was concerned that perhaps we should have chosen an easier (and cheaper) room for first timers but they took to it like a fish to water, naturals!

The rooms at clueQuest do seem to be at a premium price to other rooms in London but they do offer a few little extras which make for a nice change. Most notable is that when we finished the room our GM took a team photo and then proceeded to put them into a magnet so each of us had a team photo magnet to take home – a nice touch.

This was a solid room, and certainly very enjoyable. We had wanted to do one of their easier rooms due to the experience of the new half of our team, but even this more challenging room was doable with no experience. Liz and I will definitely be back to do the other rooms at clueQuest, we just need to convince my colleague to join us again.

PUZZLES

Really nice mix of puzzles in here, some high tech, some low tech, but all fitted in well with the theme and none of them were broken. There were a few red-herrings but not enough to get annoyed about. The room flowed from puzzle to puzzle and we didn’t have any issues working out what to do next.

I particularly enjoy rooms that really test your ability to work as a team and this one did that, where a number of puzzles relied on you working and communicating with each other if you wanted to succeed.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

The room design was very good and you could see that this is obviously a well funded operation. The room didn’t feel tired at all and nothing was broken. I’m not sure if I was immersed, but I certainly had a great time and nothing in the room felt out of place.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Clues were delivered via a walkie-talkie if you needed them and although we didn’t need any clues, I am positive that the GM would have been helpful and attentive if we need any.

ANYTHING ELSE

A nice thing that clueQuest do when taking team photos is to give you their mouse logo to hold and pose with. If you do the room without any clues you get a golden mouse instead – which we did. Again it is a small thing but it’s nice to have something to recognise your achievement.

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 4 people

Address: 169-171 Caledonian Road, London, N1 0SL

Website: https://cluequest.co.uk