Clue HQ – Sacrifice

THIS GAME IS NOW CLOSED – (which means that team BOAEH will forever be the ultimate winners)
Clue HQ – Sacrifice.
Location: Warrington
Game Date 24/01/2017.
Red Team: Amy & Ian.
Blue Team: Asa & Julie

We had chosen sacrifice, and were originally going to play it as a regular room, until we were contacted by Asa from Escape Game Addicits who suggested that we “teamed” up and took on sacrifice in a 2v2 battle. GAME ON. After some fun banter on twitter….

We were all set for a head to head battle of the bloggers… but who would win?! Red Team (Team Brit of an Escape) or Blue Team (Team Escape Game Addicts)….

Theme:
“You wake up, blindfolded and disorientated, with no recollection of how you came to be here. You quickly learn that in order to escape you must compete for your life. Every human must face this test at some point in their lifetime, to seek out the survivors and eliminate the unworthy. In this race against time and your friends, will you be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for your own survival? You have one hour to prove yourself; it’s them… or you”

True to the theme we were blindfolded when lead into the room, we listened to the video intro and whipped off our blindfold…
There’s a fun surprise which lets you keep check of your competitors throughout the game… less said the better as it’s a fun reveal!
The theming was red, everything in the room was red (cause we were the red team aha) Quite sparsely decorated, it’s clear this room is all about the puzzles, the race and the competition and less about the decor!
It’s a very, very small room, so keep this in mind if you don’t like tight spaces, thankfully ClueHQ limit numbers in each room to 3, which is an excellent idea as space is so tight!
It was the usual of ClueHQ that there are loads of padlocks to open!

Game Play:
A strictly linear room (I suppose it has to be in a head to head game!) There was a decent mix of puzzles, hitting all bases and a nice physical puzzle (that Ian excelled at) The room had a fairly good flow, and kept us busy for the hour.
The puzzles weren’t boring, and a couple were very unique, or at least I hadn’t seen them before 🙂 each puzzle was entertaining, and had good logic behind it, it’s nice when there’s good Ahha moments with each puzzle.
There were 2 puzzles in the room that were very, very similar. I feel this could be tweaked to provide a different puzzle in place. As doing the “same” puzzle twice in 1 hour is a bit disappointing!
At stages in the game, teams are required to work together to proceed. This is a good twist as at later stages of the game it makes you think about whether or not you want to share information with your competitors! You’re able to hear the other team at all times, so think carefully about how you play the game! (We ended up practically whispering!)

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen in the room. With neutral clues for both teams and 3 requests per team!

Game Host:
Jack was our game host, he was clearly paying very close attention to both our games (Kudos to Jack for essentially running 2 games at once!) He was personable and friendly, but not as chatty as some of the other hosts we’ve had at ClueHQ.

Did we escape?
Yes, and we WON! Wahhoooooo! We escaped with 8 minutes left, leaving the other guys in the dust! (Well, they were 2 puzzles behind us!) Unfortunately, they didn’t get the chance to complete the room. I think it may be a nice addition to let loosing teams have the rest of their time to complete the room… I’ve no doubt Asa & Julie would have escaped in the remaining 8 minutes, they were sooooo close!

Website:https://cluehqwarrington.co.uk/
Price:
2 Players £44
3 Players £63
4 Players £76
5 Players £85
6 Players £90

I really enjoyed the competitive element of this game! I’d never played a competitive game before, although it felt quite stressed at some points, we had a great time!