Present, in June 2023, were: The Ant, Aunty Ant, the Lovely Randos (Ellie, Ty and Connor) ££

Not an Escape Room as such, but definitely of interest to enthusiasts of the hobby, we were lucky enough to test play a new offering from the London-based legends at clueQuest. For a puzzle-led walking tour round a spectacular area of the old city, we managed to pick a beautiful day and a lovely trio of strangers, and set out to save the world.

The pandemic and lockdowns let to a dramatic rise in play-at-home games, with Escape Room venues working to translate their in-person experiences to something that was more Covid-safe. clueQuest was no exception, and actually very quick off the mark, with their Print+Cut+Escape range, which combined a digital interface with at-home printed papercrafts. Glitch Hunters is the natural post-Covid progression from that, using the same digital wizardry but now combined with fresh air and real-world architecture.

The concept – that evil Professor Blacksheep is up to his tricks again and that your team, as hero assistants to Agent Q, has to foil the dastardly plans – has been cleverly switched from their King’s Cross HQ to a free-range outdoor environment, utilising existing tiny (and some not so tiny) details in the real-world. You are looking for glitches, things out of place, that might have been caused by Blacksheep’s technology, and then ultimately trying to bypass his security systems to prevent disaster. This is a huge amount of fun, managing to spin all the sights of the City of London, both the familiar and the previously-unnoticed, into the story.

The game is phone-led, following a link sent through when ordering. The general style of this will be intuitive to anyone who has been to Phantom Peak, or played CluedUpp, Hidden City or Firehazard games. You can use one phone between the team, but it would get a bit crowded. The technology allows the team to play together, including moving on without everyone having to fill in answers, so a phone each is probably the way to go. Playing with kids, tech-savvy teens would almost certainly be much happier using their own devices, but younger ones might be better shoulder-surfing rather than needing their own log-in.

The game itself is very family-friendly and fun with the cartoon super-villian vibes. There are plenty of spot-the-difference and say-what-you-see type puzzles, which are accessible to less experienced players. It isn’t necessarily easy, but rewards communication and teamwork. The experience might not be too suitable for little ones though. It is a lot of walking, round a not-particularly child-friendly areas of the city (lack of loos and bins was discussed!). Our gameplay lasted over two hours – you don’t have to time it and you can pause the app for breaks – and although I think it is stair-free some of the areas were quite crowded, so a buggy and toddlers would be stressful. I could see it strongly appealing to teenagers though.

There is a really good amount of puzzling to be done here: even for an experienced team it felt like a full story and you get your money’s worth in the cleverly curated content. You could possibly speedrun the course and be done in an hour, but that would mean missing out on experiencing some iconic landmarks in an entirely new way.

I really loved this experience. As very much a tourist in London, it felt exciting and educational as well as (in places) quite humorous. You could probably turn it into a fabulous (if very expensive) pub crawl, and it would be as much fun to do as a duo as it was to do as a group. I’m still feeling slightly concerned about the poor churchwarden who, seeing five weirdos staring intently at the outside of his building, earnestly invited us in. He probably didn’t expect the answer of “sorry, we are on an urgent mission to disable the ram-droid surveillance centre across the road, so maybe another time”. Hopefully, the game will be deservedly popular, and he’ll get used to it…

• Storyline: Good save-the-world fun. Helps to keep track, so make sure your teammates don’t skip sections before you read them.
• Location: An iconic area of the city. Busy during the week, quieter at weekends.
• Googling: Not needed, everything is self-contained in the game.
• Puzzles: A mix, some easy ones for the novel way of navigating, some tougher ones at each puzzle spot.
• Physicality: clueQuest say 4000 steps on a pedometer. We’d definitely done our 10k with getting to and from the location, even with the help of the Tube.  Route is accessible, though.
• Scare factor: None, as long as you don’t get too paranoid about the sheep-induced apocalypse.
• Age suitability: clueQuest’s advice is on-point here “Nothing in the game is unsuitable for children – so as long as they like puzzles and/or walking, they’ll be fine!”
• Timed?: Only self-imposed, there’s no actual time limit.
• Requires: At least one decent smartphone with good reception and battery. A powerpack or some sort of on-the-go charger would be helpful if you are on a day trip.

Message from clueQuest below:

clueQuest website

Also by clueQuest: CQ Origenes, Plan52 and Revenge of the Sheep

££ Note: we did not pay for this experience, but this does not affect the nature of our review and all our opinions remain our own. This was a test-play, not exactly the final game, but was very close to the final version, so there would be no fundamental differences.