Review: cQ ORIGENES, Clue Quest, London
Fun Factor: 8
ClueQuest
169-171 Caledonian Road, London, N1 0SL
Date Played: September 9, 2025
Booking Size: 2 to 7 players — we recommend 4
Game Time: 60 minutes
Difficulty: Advanced
Horror Theme: No
Objective
To stop a cyberattack, your team needs to get inside Mr. Q’s old base. Unfortunately, the only “practical” way in is to use experimental shrinking technology, reduce yourselves to mouse size, and solve the problem from inside a much larger world. Your mission is to secure the mainframe before the effect wears off.
Our Experience
We had a lot of fun playing cQ Origenes at ClueQuest in London, and we highly recommend it with a Fun Factor of 8.
That Fun Factor is based on the fun and engaging set, some impressively large and playful set pieces, a lot of puzzle content, and the way the room turns a cyberattack mission into something more imaginative. As described in ClueQuest’s setup, the mission begins with a cyberattack, but in order to stop it, your team needs to use experimental technology to shrink down to mouse size and enter Mr. Q’s old base.
Lets get down to business - literally, before you can save the day, you first need to activate the machinery, shrink yourselves down, and enter a much larger world in your newly reduced bodies.
Thinking Small
The best parts of the set are the moments where everyday objects are reimagined at mouse scale. That choice turns what could have been a more straightforward tech mission into something much more playful and escape-room-fun.
Thanks to ClueQuest for allowing me to share this very fun prop from cQ Origenes. I originally planned to post the lock by itself, but without my hand for scale, it just looked like a normal combination lock…It was definitely not a normal combination lock.
This kind of scale effect is not easy to pull off convincingly, and cQ Origenes is a fine example of this done very well. One of our favorites? A standard combination lock — except instead of being something you could hold in your hand, it was roughly waist-high.
Thanks to ClueQuest for allowing us to take photos and video of this.
Puzzle Style and Difficulty
The set is substantial, the puzzles are varied, and there is a lot to find, sort, observe, and connect.
We considered this an advanced room not because it was filled with tedious tasks, but because several solves required layered connections across different parts of the set. That kind of difficulty is much more fun for us than repetition or arbitrary tiny details. We enjoy puzzles where something that looks fairly simple at first glance turns out to be more nuanced and advanced in a satisfying way.
There is also a meaningful scavenging component here. Because the set is packed with detail, a smaller team can lose time simply making sure they have found and connected everything. We had fun throughout, but there were moments where the challenge came more from tracking everything than from the magic of the core concept.
Why We Recommend 4 Players
Although cQ Origenes can be booked by 2 players, we highly recommend 4 for the most fun. A team of 2 can certainly play the room, but we found it very challenging with just the two of us.
This is one of those rooms where extra eyes, extra hands, and extra brains will almost certainly increase the fun rather than create crowding.
That is one of the main reasons we are recommending 4 players, and also why this landed at a strong Fun Factor 8 rather than pushing higher for us.
Technology, Lighting, and Game Flow
The room makes effective use of technology and lighting to help guide teams…sometimes gently… toward what is active and what probably should be your focus. That was especially helpful because, with this much detail in the room, it could otherwise have been easy to not know where to start.
There was one moment where we may have unintentionally triggered an effect that made the room quite dark while we still had some scavenging to do, but overall the lighting was a helpful part of the game flow.
There was also one puzzle sequence that returned later in the game. I am generally not a fan of repeating the same solve, but here I simply have to admit it really made sense within the story and to not include it would have been awkward. Our only hesitation was that we briefly thought we had to redo more of the sequence than was actually required. Fortunately, ClueQuest did not make us repeat the whole thing, which was a thoughtful design choice.
Hints, Hosting, and Facilities
The hint system was basic: walkie-talkie communication with hints delivered either by voice or on a screen. As usual for us, our hints were mostly for things we had missed while searching rather than for puzzle logic.
ClueQuest also has a large waiting area, room for party events, and friendly staff. We arrived quite early and the staff was attentive and was able to organize an early start for us, This is a substantial escape room company that has contributed a lot to the industry, and we have enjoyed playing many of its rooms.
Final Thoughts
We highly recommend cQ Origenes, though Revenge of the Sheep remains our personal favorite of the ClueQuest rooms.
If you play cQ Origenes at ClueQuest in London, please let them know you saw our review at Fun Factor Escape Room Reviews. Also, please drop us a note — we would love to hear from you.
Until next time, keep escaping, and remember: when the world gets too big, sometimes you just need to think small.
And Have Fun!
