Quest: Mission Impossible Breakout | Review

Quest: Mission Impossible Breakout Review | It’s present day Egypt, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to locate and disarm a dirty bomb targeting the nation and its ancient past. The clock is ticking to save yourself, save Egypt and save History.

Completion Time: 45 minutes
Date Played: 16th August 2021
Party Size: 2
Difficulty: Medium
Recommended For: Everyone!

The number of people I’ve met that have visited Jersey, even fewer of which who have played an escape room on the island, I can count on one hand… Which is why I couldn’t wait to book ourselves into Quest to try out their games!

No, literally… I couldn’t wait! We flew in at 9pm and after receiving the “All Clear” from our COVID-19 PCR tests, we booked in for the very first slot to play Mission Impossible Breakout the following morning. It was all the more special that our games master Steve turned out to be the designer of the Mission Impossible Breakout room at Quest himself.

*excited escape room noises*

Whenever travelling somewhere ‘off the beaten track’ in escape room terms, you have to ready yourself to either find an incredible hidden gem, or be disappointed. I’ve had both.

About Quest Jersey

Quest is located near the waterfront in St. Helier, Jersey’s capital. It’s located in the same building as Arcadia and can be found by following the signs for the arcade. I mention this as it did take us a few times to actually find the correct entrance, but once you’ve figured it out you’re golden.

It’s home to three escape rooms:

• Mission Impossible Breakout
• Space Quest
• The Secrets of Horus

The first two are standard, 50 minute rooms and the latter is a shorter 30 minute game aimed at a younger audience.

Ancient Egypt Meets Mission Impossible in this Escape Room

Mission Impossible Breakout has a really unique theme! It’s Mission Impossible, with an Ancient Egypt twist. Now I’ll caveat and mention I’ve never seen any of the Mission Impossible films, but I’m 99% sure they aren’t set in Ancient Egypt.

When you first open the door to Mission Impossible Breakout you enter a dusty old Egyptian tomb complete with hieroglyphs, ancient mummies, sphynxes and dusty old research tomes piled high. The idea is you’re deep underneath Cairo in a site of historical importance and your mission is to find and locate seven bombs hidden around the world. If you get them correct it’ll reveal the location of the final one – here in Cairo! It’s primed and ready to wipe out the pyramids and all this history, so you’ve got just 50 minutes to find the bombs, disarm them, and make it out alive!

It’s a pretty unique twist on two common themes and despite my doubt about how such a theme could work, Quest really do nail it with a beautiful and realistic theme of both the ancient and modern aspects. The whole thing works together well, allowing for a difference pace and completely different vibe to each section of the game. Whilst you may have time to rummage through some old books and decipher hieroglyphs in the first part, you’ll have to quickly disarm a beeping bomb in the second!

Crack the Code, Disarm the Bomb

In terms of difficulty, Mission Impossible Breakout felt really well balanced. It’s a 50 minute long room and we tackled it as a team of two (one of us experienced, the other less so) and managed to escape with less than 5 minutes on the clock!

Clues were available by speaking with the Games Master, and we used one or two… Plus a couple of nudges in the right direction when we strayed way off the ball. In hindsight, we probably didn’t need the clues we asked for, but it’s better to escape with clues than not escape at all!

There’s a good variation in puzzles in this room, and players can expect to encounter a number of locks requiring 3, 4 and 5 digit codes or keys, a few logic puzzles, many search-and-find, and an element of geographical knowledge too. Though on that last part, don’t worry! Everything you need can also be found within the room. Overall, there were plenty of things I’d never seen before in any other room, and plenty of puzzles powered with some clever machinery.

Personally, we loved how much rummaging around there was in the room. It felt authentic – so much to discover! It was the type of room where you thought you’d found everything then suddenly spotted a secret compartment, or an object out of place. I love a room with plenty to do, and Mission Impossible Breakout had it all. As a team of two we escaped just in time, but a larger team would likely zip through this game faster than we did.

After exploring the ancient Egyptian area, we finally unlocked the ‘ending room’. I don’t want to give too many spoilers about what to expect in this room, but here we found the bomb and a rather brilliant laser maze you’ll definitely want to get down on all fours and try to navigate.

The Verdict

We spent the rest of our Jersey trip telling everyone who would listen how great Quest was – the hotel attendant, waiters, the captain of a boat..! I stand by this verdict even now, a few weeks later once we’ve returned to London. It was a real hidden gem of a game and any escape room enthusiasts visiting the Channel Islands must visit Quest.

Not only a brilliant room, but fantastic customer service too. On finishing the game we were walked around the room and several Easter Eggs and fun details we may have missed were pointed out. It was a joy meeting the creator, someone so passionate about escape rooms himself, and we both walked away smiling to celebrate in style at the local waterfront pub.

Mission: Impossible Breakout can be booked on Quest’s website here.

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