Clue HQ Manchester: CSI: The Panic Room

No Need to Panic...

My second visit to Clue HQ as they did a good value '6 play for £60' offer.

Story

Find out who managed to kill a wealthy businessman inside his personal Panic Room.

Puzzles

They were very discernible; it was easy to see what you had to do and when. Although there were one or two difficult physical puzzles, it would have been too easy without them. Most involved a fair bit of working out, but as a team of six, this was no problem, especially as we could split up.

Mise-en-scène

Not great. It was techy-looking and appeared very similar to Detonation, just with different props/equipment in there. Although the victim is described as a businessmen, the 'body' looked like a young chavvy teenager (I'm sure he was wearing trainers).

Final Comments

It wasn't a particularly exciting escape experience. A team of six was too big- take about four people.

Unfortunately we were one the first to try out this room when It opened, the puzzles were pretty good, most made sense, unfortunately some pieces of the room weren't set up correctly and 1 or 2 pieces broke/didn't work resulting in stopped playtime for resetting.

Hosting was good and I can't say for certain if the room has improved since the opening few weeks, but knowing clue hq I'm sure it will have 

A different set up in the sense that it's about solving a crime rather than escaping from the room, there was a central 'evidence base' that helped to measure progress, which we liked. The geography of the room wasn't our favourite feature and we found ourselves getting in each other's way a few times but there were some nice puzzles, including a really neat audio one.

It's a solid room that was fun to play.

One of the better rooms at this location. 

We spent an exciting hour here on a lovely bright Monday morning ably assisted by the very cheery and helpful Bethany. As we usually play in a larger group, and this is billed as Clue HQ Harrogate’s most difficult room, I was a bit anxious that we wouldn’t get out in time, and there certainly was a lot to do! But fortunately with a few prods in the right direction nothing stumped us for very long and in the end we got out with time to spare! A really well designed room with lots of cool tech, some puzzles obvious and familiar, some less so, and a huge variety of types of task. Even though it was one enclosed room, the theme made this work perfectly, and the sense of tension heightened with each passing minute in a very authentic-feeling way. We particularly enjoyed the big set-piece series of puzzles which we solved towards the latter half of our time in the room as these felt really tactile and realistic. Not too many padlocks here, and every one felt like it fitted in the environment (the Panic Room of a paranoid businessman). The clueing system and the countdown timer also fit perfectly with the theming, and this screen was used throughout to great effect. My one little niggle was that the final major puzzle was a bit clunky, and we solved it more by luck and our own deductive reasoning than in the way that I think it was meant to function. Nevertheless, this was a thoroughly enjoyable room which really immersed us in the action from beginning to end, and I can heartily recommend it.