Clued Up! Escape Rooms Norwich: Nuclear Countdown

Nuclear Countdown is the oldest of the escape rooms at CluedUp's Norwich location, and we played it having already enjoyed the others. It's fair to say that it's perhaps not as impressive as their other rooms; it takes place in a single, medium-sized room, and the decor is functional, but fairly plain. There is a section of the game that must be navigated by flashlight, but fortunately this does not continue for the whole game. The locks are mostly numeric, alpha, or directional combo locks, and the puzzles are fairly code and cipher-heavy. There's no Hollywood-style flashy moments.

That said, even though it might not have been considered state-of-the-art or stand out "wow!", there is still plenty to commend about this game:

- although there was only limited tech involved, what tech there was all worked flawlessly.

- the puzzles themselves were solid, and in-keeping with the theme: chemical formulas, locations of missile sites, access codes, that sort of thing. There was not a single puzzle that we felt was unfair, misleading, or out-of-place.

- Our GM was attentive and gave just the right level of nudge when needed

- There was some suitable background ambience music track which helped set the mood

- The room, lobby area, and entire building were well-sanitised, there was fresh air and hand sanitiser available throughout, and staff wore masks (as did we in those areas, but we removed them in the room itself)

So, all in all, still a very solid room, but if you only play one room in this location I'd probably recommend trying their Bank Heist or Prison Breakout rooms first.