This June, clueQuest kindly invited us to try out a recently launched product, a VR Escape Room. Escape rooms are normally a 60 minute challenge to solve puzzles within a room or multiple rooms to a theme or storyline. The difference this time was using the Virtual Reality technology to set the stage as the room. With not knowing too much about the experience in advance, we were excited to see what technology is brought to the game with us loving the escape room concept, especially from clueQuest!
clueQuest is an escape room organisation based in cental London around the King's Cross area. With a spy theme, all of the 4 escape rooms they offer follow a continous storyline about Doctor Q and Professor Blacksheep. The VR Escape rooms don't follow the same storyline as the rest of the escape rooms hosted by clueQuest.
clueQuest currently offer 2 VR Escape Room experiences since 2019. We experienced Escape The Lost Pyramid whilst the other is Beyond Medusa's Gate. Both games are hosted using HTC Vive headsets and have been created in the Assassin's Creed Origins world. Ubisoft creates most of these experiences and offers them across the world for places to purchase for commercial to use and clueQuest are a host to these games.
"An expedition led by Sir Beldon Frye disappears somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula. A team of four and a dozen local porters were looking for the Lost Pyramid of Nebka… Or more precisely, “something” that should have been there. They were never seen again. Using the simulation reconstructed from their DNA memory, your team will put themselves in the shoes of the explorers. Find out what happened to the expedition. And more importantly, locate what they were looking for."
When entering clueQuest, we were taken to the VR room which is a basic room within the building which hosts 4 VR headsets and a mat. You are given a back story and some instructions before you are given the headset & controls and start the experience. Before each experience, you take on a tutorial to use the headset and controls so you can get a feel of how it all works.
Before starting the experience, you are allowed to customise your character within the world using different costumes and pre made characters. This was a nice little touch. As the game begins, you are thrown right into the experience with a storyline narrated like a story game would.
The experience overall felt more of an adventure game with puzzles thrown in amongst challenges. Imagine a tomb raider kind of styled game but in first person. throughout the experience, we had to use what was around us to move and work our way out of the pyramid. We had to climb, use archery skills, alongside solving cog puzzles to move forward which needed each others assistances throughout. This meant you were always doing something similar however you had your own individual task to do at each time.
For anybody who has a fear of heights might find some of the adventure game incredibly difficult. Starting the game at quite a high level, you move further up the pyramid to your escape with the height becoming ever more difficult to handle. The immersiveness for this escape room game to take you out of the real world and place you in an alternate universe for a period of time is a true creation of how technology is moving forward. With room for improvement in future years with updated systems, experiences like this will become the future of entertainment.
We completed our 2 player experience within 40 minutes which is around average for our adventure. Experiences must be completed within an even number due to how it is setup with a current maximum setup of 4 players within the room. The package does not come with a photo within this game however, we were advised with other adventures you can get an in game photo of your avatars sent as a digital download!
As our first VR escape room, it was safe to say we were not dissapointed. clueQuest are leading the field with the escape room technology and gameplay styles that stand out compared to others in a crowded market. All of this comes with a reasonable price from peak & off peak prices.
To book your possible first escape room virtual reality experience or other traditional escape rooms, we recommend you head to the official website which can be found by clicking on Mr Q below. Until then, we are signing off as agents until next time...
