Clue HQ Birmingham: A-I-9

By | March 20, 2019

by Clue HQ Birmingham (website)

Arches 20 & 21, Lionel Street, B3 1AG

Birmingham

2-6 players

Languages: EN

60 minutes

closed
Six months after the great inventor Professor Tepet’s death – M.I.6. gained access to the lab where he kept all of his greatest inventions. Among the files, they found an abandoned document called A-I-9 detailing an artificial intelligence peacekeeping program. Scientists finally managed to recreate the program, rolling it out across the nation. A type of robot (called ‘9bots’) were integrated into society. The NHS could diagnose patients before symptoms appeared while the army neutralised threats before they happened, the country thrived, for a time. 24 hours ago an anomaly appeared in the code shutting down internet and telecommunications worldwide and soon after chaos ensued. A-I-9 is corrupting the system from the inside. This was meant to be impossible. The only way to stop it is to destroy it before it can destroy us – can you get past their self-protection systems?
“The end of the world was always going to be man-made. The only question was how?” – Professor Errol Tepet
show full description
Thank you for helping keep Escape the Review up to date!
Let us know what needs changing:




If you own or manage this company, you can also claim the listing and update it yourself

Overall rating

Rated between 3 and 4 out of 5

based on ratings from 29 users
combined with 2 pro reviews

Your review

Player reviews

Cat.P rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: Apr 2017 Team size: 4 Outcome: Successful escape!
hi-techclever
grogu42 experienced rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 4 Time taken: 45.00 Outcome: Successful escape!

Didn't care for this game. Mostly linear game with pretty standard puzzles, so most of the game was bottlenecked, so not really fun for a group of 4.

Siân O'Brien experienced rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 16/09/2018 Team size: 4 Time taken: 43:50 Outcome: Successful escape!

My first escape room. It was awesome. We did however manage to accidentally circumvent a puzzle. We didn't know, as it was our first Escape Room, but I don't feel like that should have been possible. Hopefully that will have been fixed by now, but because of it, I can't give a 5 star rating. 

Aine Morgan rated this:Rated between 45 and 45 out of 5
smudgepuss rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 29/05/2017 Team size: 6 Time taken: About 20 minutes Outcome: Successful escape!

Honestly, we played this with too many of us.  Do it either with a small team, or inexperienced players.  We're relatively experienced, and there are lots of parallel puzzles.  I don't remember how long we took but our host appeared breathless at the door 30 seconds after we escaped as he hadn't quite paid attention and didn't expect us to finish so fast!

As a guide, we turned up exactly on the dot of when we should have but somehow still missed the communal briefing with all the other teams.  Then after we got out, we had our victory photo, a nice chat with out host, a bit of a wait while they worked out if there were any free slots for other puzzles later in the week (they try to sell you a reduced rate voucher for another game afterwards, but as we were only around for a week there was no point if we couldn't use it), chatted some more, and still didn't see a single other person (we could hear them!) before leaving.

Sean Nash rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 11 Dec 2017 Team size: 5 Time taken: 51 mins
hi-techoriginal

A small room - either do this with 2-3 people max. Lots of locks. Teamwork required but sad there wasn't a second room. Good intense ending.

🔐James Bloodworth expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 04/09/2021 Team size: 2 Time taken: 49:08 Outcome: Successful escape!
hi-techgreat hosting
One of their older games but can still hold its own.  A non-linear format allows multiple puzzles to be tackled, indeed when one of us was stuck we would switch and move to a different puzzle.  There is one puzzle that has the potential to be as infuriating at the 'drip' puzzle (if you know, you know) but they have mitigated the listening phase of the puzzle.
🦡cipherdelic virtuoso rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Alice Lucy rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 30 Oct 2021 Team size: 4 Time taken: 40 Outcome: Successful escape!
broken tech

Was fun theming, but for sure had more people than needed, especially for a relatively small room - often had 2 people just waiting, or feeling in the way during certain tasks. 

Also one of the puzzles involved a computer with a wireless mouse that massively lagged, meaning the wrong things were clicked, and certain buttons were off the screen that the host had to let us know there was an issue. That one puzzle took about half our time, which was a bit of a pain.

Mark Greenhalgh expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 23/06/17
Showing most recent only - see all ratings & reviews

Reviews by escape room review sites

I'm a sucker for most sci-fi themes, so with a choice of games for a morning slot at Clue HQ's Birmingham branch I went straight for A-I-9's story of battling a rogue artificial intelligence. Also, the alternatives were their Cell Block C and Bunker 38 rooms which have been franchised to a wider number of locations across the UK, so it made sense to go for the harder-to-find game.

Clue HQ is one of the UK's large escape chains, with currently three core branches and close to a dozen franchise l...

See also