Break Free Leicester: Curse of the Sphynx

Honestly, this room contains more padlocks than needed. It's very padlock-driven, with puzzles after puzzles, which leaves little room for immersion, story, originality, or even a sense of enjoyment. The logic isn't necessarily an issue, there's no room for it. It's all about cracking obscure (both literally and figuratively speaking) codes as fast as you can, so it gets rapidly draining and repetitive. 

If you love opening dozens of padlock in semi darkness in what is supposed to be an Egyptian tomb, this may feel like heaven for you. For anyone else, this should be a pass. 

That being said, we had an amazing game master, who cheered with us when we escaped. But even she wasn't enough to save the room. 

Enjoyed this room, lots of padlocks but were signposted well. A clever use of space which we hadn't seen before in a room and were pleasantly surprised with. We really clicked with the room and as a team of 2 just happily quietly got on with puzzles with no frustrations or clues needed (sections are sort of non linear so can be done at the same time).

The room needs a good clean though, the dolls stank badly and could do with a wash! There was also times when we opened boxes and their hinges entirely came off, and padlocks were rusty - it could really do with a week of maintenance just to put everything back to a good standard (it was 30pp after all!) so cannot rate it any higher because of that. 

Fun, family friendly room. Logical puzzles and lots of things to be doing. Hosting was brilliant.

Was pitched as ClueHQ's more difficult game but it wasn't particularly interesting. Just seemed to have more padlocks to do rather than any more interesting or challenging puzzles to solve.

This room was so difficult - not because the puzzles were hard but because there was very low light and there were about 20+ padlocks which were extremely difficult to read the numbers on (the paint had been scratched away) and everytime you discovered a code you'd have to put it into all of the padlocks until you found the right one. I've been to the Clue HQ in Birmingham and the padlocks had symbols by them so you know where to put the codes but the Swindon franchise version didn't have this. It completely spoiled the room for us.

Clue HQ are a great escape company, this room was fantastic.. logical puzzles, plenty to do, everything worked as it should. And fantastic hosting.

The game flows really well, nothing too out there and a fair amount of puzzles. 

Really wouldn't recommend this room, nothing but padlocks, absolutely no flow and really poor hosting

We did this as a group of 6 and would suggest others don't go in more than a 3, or four at a push/with kids. Most of the group felt like spare parts as the room was fairly linear in nature and at some points it felt ridiculously cramped. The theming is fairly good, and everything worked as intended, but it felt like there wasn't enough content - I think we got out in about half an hour!

Overall an okay room but lost marks for having a few too many padlocks

Fairly standard Clue HQ-fare (by which I mean it was full of padlocks). This room had a decent variation of puzzle types (and gets bonus points for having riddles which I always enjoy but rarely see in escape rooms).

The low lighting didn't add much, and we were glad to be early enough in the day to have fresh batteries in the supplied torches.

Generally good theming, but one memorable puzzle, while Egyptian themed, definitely didn't belong in a tomb.

This was one of our first rooms with clue HQ, we really enjoyed the different puzzles and the theatrics of this room really gave us a great introduction to the company.

I liked it - lovely theming - good hosting - some original twists.

Lots of padlocks, which we enjoy - some fun physical elements and a good design that fits with the theme really well.

Fun game don't get me wrong but not as good as Captain Riddle or Hellevator.