Clue HQ – The Vault

Clue HQ – The Vault.
Location: Warrington
Game Date 10/01/2017.
Team: Amy, Ian & Karen

Back to Clue HQ! Thank goodness for their excellent deal over Christmas! This time we took Ian’s mum, who is a complete newbie, never having done a room before…! I think we benefited greatly in The Vault having a 3rd person!

Theme:
“You and your friends recently visited a casino owned by The National Bank of Money. Accusations have been made that their machines are fixed to give the house a higher advantage. They stole your money, and you’re going to get it back!

All of the casino’s chips are stored in the vault at The National Bank of Money. Your heist appears to be going smoothly until the security system comes back on! You’ve got 60 minutes to grab as much cash (in casino chips) as you can and escape!”

I love how detailed Clue HQ’s backstories are, and this is no different with an accompanying website (www.thenationalbankofmoney.co.uk) which if used correctly will greatly benefit your “loot”, it’s well worth doing this research!

The room itself was decorated well, giving a good feel of a banking office, managers office and safe vault. Company memos posted around gave a nice touch, and there were a couple of nice tech touches which set the scene, I felt this to be the most immersive Clue HQ game we’ve played so far.

Game Play:
The game was quite linear, but felt almost “stop-start” in that we’d fly through some parts and then come to a grinding halt.
There was a mix of puzzles, but the room did lean towards the observational, and a decent amount of searching. One puzzle required quite a logic leap to complete and we wouldn’t have got it without a clue.
There are a LOT of padlocks, as is the norm with Clue HQ, I reckon at least 20-25 to open. We did not STOP for the entire hour, I do feel this room didn’t play to our particular strengths, which is fine… not every room is going to!
I wouldn’t recommend this to first time players, the sheer amount of work in the room could prove overwhelming, but it’s a good game for experienced players to get their teeth into! Take a good team and be prepared to work your socks off!

Clue System:
Clues were delivered via a screen, which was themed very, very well to the game (this part I LOVE about Clue HQ, they very successfully continue the theme & story into the screen in the room)

Game Host:
Cadie was our Game Host, she seemed a little shy at first, but was friendly and ran our game incredibly well, giving hints with precision timing, she was clearly paying very close attention to us and was 100% on our side!

Did we escape?
Yes, we got the exit code with about 2 mins to go and spent those last 2 minutes grabbing the rest of our loot and escaping with £6.9 million!

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