I’m not going to lie, I am a sucker for puzzles: quizzes, Rubik’s cubes, board games, basically anything you can solve, I want a hand at. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of iTunes gift money (thanks to my godfather, who never fails to celebrate the holidays with iTunes credit) on escape room-esque games. My absolute favourite being an Escape from the Titanic game, with the Alcatraz follow up being a close-second.
Give me something to solve and you won’t hear from me again until I’ve done so. Which is why it was with huge excitement that I got to tag along and try out clueQuest’s newest room series “Revenge of the Sheep”. I’d done their “Operation BlackSheep” mission with work, and it was literally one of the most exciting nights of my London life. (Nerd alert). clueQuest is the number 1 escape room company in the UK, and they’ve had enough people do their rooms to fill Wembley stadium.
The team for the night was organiser extraordinaire Natasha; the master of locks, Katy; future spy and star of the world of wireless radio operating, Jasiminne; the quietly confident code-breaker, Emma; the beautifully cool under pressure, Erin; and yours truly who brought no real skills to the table other than a mutedly devious mind. Many tweets were shared in preparation for our night of saving the world. Jasiminne nailed the world-saving outfit, and I don’t think I’ve ever used #squadgoals as many times before.
We arrived at the unassuming location in time for our mission brief before delving into the world of Professor BlackSheep and Mr Q…. I won’t say anything more about the mission itself, but I will say that we saved the world with time to spare. Because when you put 6 bloggers in a room together, what can’t they do?
Before we went into the room, and during most of our briefing by the wonderful Julia, I felt extremely nervous. I’m that annoying person that really doesn’t like to lose so I try to give it my all. And during our briefing we were trained on an exciting new piece of clueQuest technology that I hadn’t used before and I was absolutely rubbish. (I was literally the worst one in the group, and I knew that task could never fall to me.) My anxiety multiplied. Once we were actually in the room and the puzzles started unfolding before our eyes, I was a lot calmer and went into my euphoric puzzle solving, happy-place. Yes, there was definitely some frantic running around the room smashing things this way and that, but I think we worked pretty well as a team on the whole. There was only one particularly section when we were stumped and stuck for a bit. You know the whole time that you have the fate of the world on your shoulders, but when we came out of the room with time to spare, I really did feel victorious. We had ACCOMPLISHED something on a Tuesday night and proved that bloggers can be clever too.
I think “Revenge of the Sheep” had more twists and surprises than “Operation BlackSheep” but I think that if you were new at escape rooms, I’d recommend starting with “PLAN52” or even “BlackSheep” before graduating to the slightly more advanced, “Revenge”.
I’d recommend clueQuest to anyone looking for a funky activity for a group of friends in London, a team bonding activity for work or a family activity for those with kids over age 9. Groups between 2-6 can be accommodated, but I think 3-5 is the best number of people to have.
You can find them at: 169-171 Caledonian Road, London, N1 0SL
Most excitingly, clueQuest is going to giveaway a voucher for you to have an escape adventure all of your own. UK entries only please!
