13 of the best outdoor puzzle trails to play in London

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Inspired by Georgie’s recent article on great team building experiences in London, I found myself looking back on all the outdoor puzzle walking trails I’ve done in London in search of the hidden gems I’d recommend above all others. Being the capital means there’s a hub of fantastic puzzle game creators using the rabbit warren of tight alleyways, historical buildings and local curiosities as their blank canvas for creating innovative and exciting games. I myself even designed a game for the (unfortunately) now-retired company Locked City back before lockdown.

 

London Outdoor Puzzle Trails by Area

If you’re in London and looking to get your puzzle fix whilst sightseeing, look no further! Here we have split each of our favourite walking trails by geographical area.

 

West

Hidden City – The Enchanted Mirror

Start Location: South Kensington Station Arcade
Areas Covered: Kensington
Length: 3-4 hours
Distance: 4 Miles

Website

The story of The Enchanted Mirror is a classic fairy tale of good vs evil in a quest to discover a mysterious enchanted mirror. The Queen sets you a challenge to best her. A challenge of your wits and cunning but, since so many before you have failed and disappeared, you’ll need more than a little help if you’re to best her and save the land once and for all.

 

The Escape Roomer plays The Enchanted Mirror

 

Secret City Trails – Hampstead

Start Location: Belsize Park Train Station
Areas Covered: Hampstead
Length: 2-3 hours
Distance: 2.5 Miles

Website

This playful walk across London’s Hampstead sharpens your senses and encourages you to appreciate the most wonderful – and often hidden – details around you.

 

Hidden City – Moriarty’s Game

Start Location: 93 Marylebone High Street
Areas Covered: Marylebone, Mayfair
Length: 3-4 hours
Distance: 1 Mile

Website

Moriarty’s Game is a must for fans of Sherlock Holmes. Follow in Sherlock’s footsteps as you go into physical locations, discover hidden clues, choose your allegiance, and crack the case Watson has given you. Hidden City is immersive like no other outdoor game you can play in London and is well worth playing.

 

Treasure Trails – London’s Little Venice

Start Location: Paddington
Areas Covered: Little Venice
Length: 2-3 hours
Distance: 3 Miles

Website

Treasure Trails is fantastic if you’ve got kids, and the best part is the whole thing is completely offline. You’ll be sent a booklet ahead of time packed with puzzles to take you from location to location. If you solve the whole quest, you’ll be entered into a monthly prize draw too!

 

Londons Little Venice

 

Central

Hidden City – The Hunt for the Cheshire Cat

Start Location: 91 The Strand
Areas Covered: Strand, Charing Cross, Waterloo
Length: 3-4 hours
Distance: 3 Miles

Website

The Hunt for the Cheshire Cat is the walking puzzle tour that made me discover my new favourite pub in all of London – but no spoilers, you’ll just have to play the whole thing yourself to find out where that is! Follow the cat through London’s alleyways, going into landmarks and cafes to speak secret codes and find secret items along the way.

 

AIM Escape – Operation Mindfall

Start Location: Temple
Areas Covered: Temple
Length: 2-3 hours
Distance: ~

Website

 

 

Secret City Trails – Picadilly Circus

Start Location: Criterion Theatre
Areas Covered: Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Houses of Parliament
Length: 1.5 – 2.5 hours
Distance: 1.3 Miles

Website

This playful walk across London’s vibrant neighbourhoods sharpens your senses and encourages you to appreciate the most wonderful – and often hidden – details around you.

 

The Secret City – Secrets of the Squares

Start Location: Picadilly Circus
Areas Covered: Picadilly Circus, Soho
Length: 2.5 – 3.5 hours
Distance: 2.8 Miles

Website

A cryptic trail through the bustling parts of central London and a great spot for tourism, shopping, and eating out.

 

East

Street Hunt – Colombia’s Finest

Start Location: Shoe Lane Library
Areas Covered: Blackfriars, Temple, St. Pauls
Length: 2 hours
Distance: ~

Website

One of my personal favourites on the list, Colombia’s Finest is a fantastically unique walking puzzle game from up and coming Street Hunt games. If you like your coffee with a dash of sinister organisation, illicit drug trade, and of course murder, then it’s a great day out!

The Escape Roomer takes on Colombia’s Finest

 

AIM Escape – Operation Mindfall

Start Location: Monument
Areas Covered: Monument, Tower of London
Length: 2-3 hours
Distance: ~

Website

Operation Mindfall is without a doubt in my mind one of the most creative and high-tech outdoor games on the market. AIM Escape’s version in particular takes you through some of the most beautiful parts of London but through the eyes of the super secret spy organisation W.I.S.E. It’s perfect for tourists and locals alike!

 

Treasure Trails – A Tale of Two Bridges

Start Location: Tower Bridge
Areas Covered: Tower Bridge, London Bridge
Length: 2-3 hours
Distance: 3 Miles

Website

Treasure Trails is fantastic if you’ve got kids, and the best part is the whole thing is completely offline. You’ll be sent a booklet ahead of time packed with puzzles to take you from location to location. If you solve the whole quest, you’ll be entered into a monthly prize draw too!

 

Honorary Mentions

CluedUpp – The Ripper

Start Location: Multiple!
Areas Covered: Multiple!
Length: 2-3 hours
Distance: 3 Miles

Website

CluedUpp gets an honorary mention on this page because it’s not tied to one specific location. In fact, you can play CluedUpp from practically anywhere in the world. There are a number of ‘events’ running at a number of cities where teams are encouraged to dress up, solve puzzles, and crack cases. We played The Ripper at Kensington and had a great time (although it probably wouldn’t challenge enthusiasts).

 

Team The Escape Roomer taking on The Ripper

Foxtrail – Lancelot

Start Location: St. Pauls
Areas Covered: St. Pauls, Borough
Length: 4+ hours
Distance: 5 Miles

Website

Foxtrail is now sadly retired but was easily my favourite outdoor adventure game in all of London, and I keep it on the list in the hopes that it will one day return! Foxtrail is easily the most ambitious walking trail, with boxes and interactable hidden across the capital. Your ticket also includes a boat ride and several stops, making it a must-do!

Team The Escape Roomer plays Foxtrail

 

That’s all for our list! Have we missed your favourite? Let us know in the comments below.

Hidden City: Moriarty’s Game | Review

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Moriarty’s Game Review | Professor James Moriarty invites you to celebrate the finest minds in London by solving his mysterious challenge, which he has personally prepared. Succeed, and he promises to make you an offer you can’t refuse…

Rating: Fun – but for the best experience, wait until lockdown is over
Completion Time: 3 hours
Date Played: April 2021 ~ April 2022
Party Size: 4
Location: Baker Street, Marylebone, Mayfair

So, I’m probably one of the few people in London who doesn’t generally recommend Hidden City. The company has a very dedicated following of puzzle enthusiasts and most people will recommend them as creators of the very best outdoor walking trails in London. For me, my un-enthusiasm boils down to one very important detail – I played most of Hidden City’s game during the global pandemic.

As I’ll repeat from my other review of The Enchanted Mirror, I had fond memories of playing Hidden City games that involved indoor locations BEFORE the pandemic. These walking games often take you into famous landmarks to discover cool and unusual facts, and pubs and cafes to whisper secret codewords to the staff and receive packs of information. At the end of each Hidden City game players often receive an edible prize. SERIOUSLY AWESOME!

…Except, that during lockdown their trails remained live and bookable, but all of the exciting bells and whistles that make Hidden City so special were removed. For obvious reasons… It was a global pandemic. But without those bells and whistles it became hard to justify the high price on the market. The cost per player was £19, reduced from £25 during the lockdown, which took away the sting a little bit. But, regardless, they’re still on the more expensive side of the London puzzle trail market, and I couldn’t in good conscience recommend them during the lockdown. Another shame, given the only thing us enthusiasts could do during the lockdown was walk around outside…

All this is to say that after writing a review for The Enchanted Mirror (lockdown version), I decided not to make the same mistake twice. Since I knew in my heart that a mid-lockdown version of the game wasn’t representative, I went ahead and booked Moriarty’s Game TWICE. First in May 2021, and then again in April 2022. It’s simply not fair for me to judge a game at a time when the business hosting the game was struggling the most. Companies still need to make money, and I’m glad that selling their treasure trails, even if they were a reduced version of them, meant that they could survive the pandemic and reopen the original, brilliant experience. But I wanted to mention all this as I have a slightly unique view of the game, and I’m reminded of this quote:

“If you can’t handle me Moriarty’s Game at it’s worse, you don’t deserve me Moriarty’s Game at my best”

So, without further adieu, let’s talk about Moriarty’s Game…

 

About Moriarty’s Game

Moriarty’s Game: The Professor’s Invitation is an outdoor walking trail that sets off from Marylebone and takes around 3 hours to complete. 2 hours if you’re super fast, and up to 4 if you’re not in a rush and want to take in the sights. Beginning outside The Marylebone on Marylebone High Street, the adventure takes teams across London, past amazing sights and down curious little alleyways in an effort to prove yourself worthy to Sherlock’s Nemesis himself, James Moriarty.

To help you out, you have a direct line of contact via text message during the game. I don’t want to give too many spoilers since this game offers several multiple choice elements, but I will say that at any time you’re either talking to Moriarty, Watson, Sherlock, or the Metropolitan Police. That is, depending on whose side in the game you take. This contact is mostly cryptic puzzles for you to solve taking you on a walk. Occasionally your correspondent will send you into a local business:

“Time for you and your team to send the stealthiest of you into the location…”

At each location we would often be handed a physical pack with physical items covered in puzzles to be solved. In our first lockdown playthrough, all of the locations were shut so no packs – all QR codes! In the second, just one of these locations was shut, but a handy QR code sent us a digital version of the physical pack which helped us along our way. We also found ourselves phoning mysterious numbers and speaking or listening to recordings from various characters from the story. All in all, thoroughly immersive. Occasional nods of “make sure you weren’t followed” added an extra dimension of “oh my god those people look suspicious” and hurrying through the shadows.

 

 

One thing I did notice about playing it twice and by noticing some other teams passing alongside us, their noses buried in their phones, is that there isn’t just one route to the game. Notably, a few key places and indoor locations must be visited in order to progress, but the roads that take you between those can (and probably will) be completely different from the next team. Different clues, different sights, and different riddles. This surprised me, but also delighted me – it meant that playing it twice felt refreshing, and I can easily see how great this would be to play in competition with another team.

At one point during the game, the second time we played I mean, something really cool happened. We were wandering around a street and one of us spotted something curious poking out of a hedgerow. It was a business card… Sherlock Holmes’ business card. No, seriously. Whilst I’m now quite sure this was co-incidence, since this was not an item we found at any point on our experience (I believe the place that we would have picked it up was shut, and so instead we had another puzzle to solve) it still added a whole new level of immersion that… No joke… Blew our minds! Props to whoever accidentally, or on purpose left that business card tucked into a hedgerow because it was very cool indeed.

In terms of the route, I don’t want to give too many spoilers so I’ll just speak in very general terms – we started near Marylebone in a lovely location next to a farmer’s market. The route took us around Mayfair and up towards Oxford Street and Regent’s Street, finally ending somewhere near Fitzrovia. In short, it’s a very ‘fancy’ area of London and not one I’d normally hang out in but it was great to explore it with fresh eyes.

 

Team The Escape Roomer stopping for a cheeky drink

 

Is Hidden City Wheelchair Accessible or Dog Friendly?

One of the biggest considerations when playing an outdoor walking game is accessibility. For this, I’m going to mention two things – wheelchair, and dog friendly, since these are two questions we get asked a lot.

On the first point, our particular route was not particularly wheelchair friendly. We encountered plenty of steps, but perhaps if you get in contact with the team they may be able to advise.

On the topic of dog friendly, being able to bring your four-legged friends is one of the biggest pulls about opting to play an outdoor walking trip over say, a physical escape room. Most physical escape rooms in London will not allow dogs in side – so visitors to the city, plan accordingly!

(As a total side note, if any fellow enthusiasts are visiting the city and need someone to shower their dog in cuddles for an hour whilst they’re in an escape room… I’m your girl!)

When we played, we had a dog with us. I wouldn’t say the experience was or wasn’t dog friendly in either way. There are plenty of locations where you are encouraged to take a seat. At some of the places, we took the dossier with us and went along our way, but I don’t think they would have turned us away if we had taken a seat. The final location insists that you take a seat and this place is dog friendly – they even brought out a little bowl of water for our thirsty four legged friend, which was a nice touch!

So is it dog friendly? Yeah, kinda! Wheelchair friendly? Not particularly.

 

 

The Verdict

The first time I played Moriarty’s Game, I didn’t enjoy it. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it was very expensive, all of the fun things were shut, and our game actually broke towards the end – our texts started going into a loop and the game randomly sent us to the start. We weren’t able to get in touch with anyone from support until days later. Oof, not good.

However, everyone has their bad day. Sometimes that bad day turns into a bad year when the world plunges into lockdown. So, I chose not to review the game at the time, as it wasn’t representative of what people’s actual experience would be.

It seems like waiting for the pandemic to end was well worth the wait, because the experience we got when we were able to book the game a second time was almost flawless. A beautiful sunny day, perfectly working tech, and getting to meet lovely people in fantastic places. We left the experience with a big ol’ grin on our faces and already made plans to book another.

So the verdict? I really, really enjoyed the game. I really recommend it. Despite everything, I am a fan of the company.

Yes, yes, it is still a really expensive game. Easily the most expensive in the market and about the same cost as an escape room ticket. But for that price you’re getting easily over 3 hours worth of fun and you’re getting some lovely keepsakes and pretty fun prize at the end too!

 

 

Moriarty’s Game can be booked by heading to Hidden City’s website here.

Hidden City: The Enchanted Mirror | Review

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Once upon a time, an Evil Queen cast out her mirror, declared herself the wisest of the land, and challenged her subjects to prove her wrong. Many tried, none were seen again. With help from familiar faces perhaps you’ll be the first to best her majesty, and uncover the truth within The Enchanted Mirror…

Rating: Fun – but for the best experience, wait until lockdown is over
Completion Time: 3 hours
Date Played: 15th May 2021
Party Size: 3
Location: Kensington, London
Recommended For: Families! Also people who want a fun walk in the Kensington area, to solve puzzles and discover beautiful architecture.

Lockdown has been rough for a lot of escape room companies but ones that offer ‘outdoor puzzle trails’ toe a relatively safe middle ground. From before lockdown, I had a lot of very fond memories about playing Hidden City games that involved indoor locations. They often take you into famous landmarks to discover cool and unusual facts, and pubs and cafes to whisper secret codewords to the staff and receive packs of information. Another cool thing about Hidden City is that at the end of the trails you always receive an edible prize. AWESOME!

…Except, thanks to the lockdown none of this is possible anymore. For this reason The Enchanted Mirror (and Moriarty’s Game that I played in the same week), in it’s current state is a fairly average a walking trail. Without the bells and whistles, it’s super hard to justify the comparatively high price on the market. Sure, the cost of a ticket has been lowered slightly (in case you’re wondering, pre-lockdown tickets cost £25, and in-lockdown tickets cost £19) but they’re still on the more expensive side of the London puzzle trail market.

That said, if you’re reading this review at some distant time in the future where the pandemic is but a mere memory, please take this with a pinch of salt! But if you’re reading it now, in 2021, I’d recommend you wait until lockdown is completely over before booking your game. In the mean time, you can still purchase vouchers or check out their play at home game, but a lockdown booking probably won’t live up to the hype or justify the price point.

So without further adieu, onto the review (it rhymes!):

The Story

The story of The Enchanted Mirror is a classic fairy tale of good vs evil in a quest to discover a mysterious (you guessed it) enchanted mirror. She sets you a challenge to best her. A challenge of your wits and cunning but, since so many before you have failed and disappeared, you’ll need more than a little help if you’re to best her and save the land once and for all.

The Route

The Enchanted Mirror is a trail that starts at South Kensington station, a stone’s throw away from all the cool museums like the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum. It’s a busy area and in fact we also saw other teams at the start and throughout the trail hunting about for clues – it’s a popular trail! It ends, after a long winding route around beautiful houses, parks and scenes, a few stops down in High Street Kensington.

As the crow flies it doesn’t seem to great a distance but all in all we walked around 19,000 steps over the course of The Enchanted Mirror! After being locked up for so long it was the exercise we sorely needed too. Of course there are plenty of optional stops along the route. We took one of them as a toilet break but as very few places were open we didn’t stop for any food or drinks as suggested.

What is extra special about this walk is how beautiful the route is. If you think you know the Kensington area, think again! This trail took us through hidden passages, beneath beautiful flower arches, around lesser known alleyways, up stairs behind churches and past iconic artwork. We joked that the unofficial name of this walk should be “Hidden City: House Envy” and it’s no lie. Of course, it did help that we had the weather on our side with beautiful sunlight all day except for one flash ‘summer rain’ shower mid-way through.

The Puzzles

If you’re familiar with Hidden City you’ll know that the puzzles in this gfame have a distinctive style. Nothing quite makes sense until the street, or landmark is right in front of you. A mix of anagrams, abbreviations, and cryptic clues – you’ll have to rely on looking around you and looking very closely to crack the code. There are probably around 20 ‘clues’ to crack as you go, and each time you correctly answer you’ll be presented with the next clue.

Despite what I said in the intro, at one point, you do get to interact with a building in your environment. A pub along the way will have a QR code posted outside – or just inside the door on a menu that you can scan to get a code. It’s clear that this puzzle used to be physical, but the creators have done a good job converting it to a digital format. Arguably this was the hardest puzzle in the whole game, but if there pub were open it would be a perfect excuse to grab a table and take a seat as you riddle it out.

The puzzles are as a whole, pretty challenging, but good fun and particularly good use of their environment. The creators have thought long and hard about making sure it’s fully immersive and again, despite the pandemic, they’ve done a good job and made a challenging-but-accessible puzzle trail.

Overall

Good fun! Hidden City are a great company that make some really innovative and immersive experiences. The pandemic shutting everything down makes it harder to run anything ‘immersive’ and they’ve done their best but I’d definitely recommend waiting until later for something truly spectacular!

I personally had a lovely time on a sunny afternoon with 2 of my best friends. We weren’t worried about being top of the leaderboard, we just wanted a nice (and different) day out, which is EXACTLY what we got with The Enchanted Mirror. In the end we saved the day and went home with full stomachs for a nap. You can’t ask for anything more.

The Enchanted Mirror can be played for £19 per person by booking on Hidden City’s website here.

Secret City Trails: Kings Cross – Colour, Curiosities and Courtyards | Review

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Dive into the history of London’s buzzing Kings Cross area! Trust us, there’s much more to discover here than platform 9¾. Follow the location-based riddles made by our local creator, Jennifer, to explore hidden wonders of this remarkable neighbourhood. You’ll learn little-known or forgotten stories behind striking sculptures, fascinating architecture, and unexpected pops of colour. It’s an experience for the curious by the curious!

Rating: Delightful!
Completion Time: 1hr 23m
Date Played: 9th May 2021
Party Size: 2
Location: King’s Cross
Recommended For: Families, Couples, People who want a lovely day out (go on a weekend!)

Kings Cross – Colour, Curiosities and Courtyards is the second Secret City Trails experience I’ve played, and I’m beginning to get the hang of their unique style of puzzle! This time I was joined by the fabulous Bianca of Shiny Life for Me on a sunny Sunday afternoon. At the time of writing, it’s the last sunny day I can remember actually (*shakes fist at the rain*), therefore I’m glad we made the most of it!

The sun must’ve done us some favours though as at the time of writing, our score earned our team an awesome 10th place on the leader board overall! Take that *checks notes* Team Wiffins, in 11th place!

Unlike a lot of my reviews, I’m leaving off the “Story” aspect of this review, as Secret City Trails aren’t build around a narrative – or rather, you’re the narrative! The story is whatever you make of it and really it’s just a fun way to explore a new part of your city without worrying about saving the world or tracking down an elusive enemy.

The Route

Kings Cross – Colour, Curiosities and Courtyards starts off out front of King’s Cross station and, after talking a long round about route, ends up in the ‘new build’ area of King’s Cross: the beautiful and modern area behind the station next to the canals. Along the way, you’ll get to go into the station itself, around the courtyards in the nearby area, and into the British Library too.

I did two walks in one day, and by the end of the day I’d walked a whopping 25,000 steps! But noooo… Don’t get the wrong idea, this walk itself isn’t 25,000 steps. Unless you want it to be? It’s actually about half of that.

My favourite bit – even though by the time we finally got there we’d started rushing (gotta get that good score, amirite?) – was the canal area towards the end. It’s incredibly pretty round there and honestly I could have found a sunny spot on the grass and dozed for hours. It didn’t help one of the canal boats was also playing live music – lovely!

On our particular walk, we experienced one or two minor issues with the route, however this was down to us being the first team to play it post-lockdown. The British Library section was shut, and one of the features in a puzzle had been removed. However, on alerting the Secret City Trails team they’ve let me know they’ve fixed this right away! So take my experience with a pinch of salt.

The Tech

This walk was played entirely on a browser on our mobile phones! The team leader is given a link at the start of the game that all team mates can sign onto and begin their journey! The format goes:

  • Receive a riddle to your phone
  • Follow the clues and head to the location
  • Solve the riddle, input the answer
  • Read some facts about the local area
  • And repeat!

You can see your progress throughout the game at all times, and optional breaks are even listed in the game so you know how long until you can stop for a coffee! Which is exactly what we did at the half way mark and a nice opportunity to catch up whilst not thinking about puzzles for a brief half hour.

The Puzzles

In terms of puzzles, this is where the ‘core’ of the game really is. Each puzzle is a riddle… Of sorts! The kind of confusing message that would only make sense as you walk it through. Think anagrams of place names, puns hidden inside words, and references to stepping L or R depending on where about you are.

More than being ‘hard to solve’ you need to really pay attention to your environment – read every sign, every blue plaque, and look closely at the cobblestones you’re walking over! For this reason, this game is an excellent way to get to know the city. Avid puzzlers won’t be challenged, but a family or friends group will enjoy an exciting walk.

We got slightly stuck towards the start on one section, where the answer became super obvious once we walked an extra block (and might even have been more obvious earlier if not for scaffolding). So for this reason, I’ll also say to trust your gut and explore the environment thoroughly!

The Company

Secret City Trails, originally founded by all-female duo Wendy and Kristina, is now an international puzzle trail company spanning countless cities. In each city is a team of puzzle writers who can submit their own games to be used on the app (I assume) via a shared revenue model. Different creators have different styles and for that reason the games are priced slightly differently.

The most expensive route in London is priced at £30 per team, and the least expensive at £16 per team – unless you count the £10 “Mystery Walk” offer where you’ll be allocated a game at random. This makes the King’s Cross walk comfortably priced in the ‘middle range’ and great value for what you get too!

Overall

I really enjoy Secret City Trails! ESPECIALLY in lockdown where I’ve been having some serious escape room withdrawals, being able to solve puzzles out in the open with friends really scratches that itch! I discovered some amazing new stuff in an area I’d never normally visit, such as a beautiful mural of a maze and some awesome art within King’s Cross station itself. I love the area, I love the canals, and I love the company I shared the game with! I’d definitely recommend Secret City Trails to anyone new to the city, or even if you’ve lived here your whole life a chance to discover something new!

Kings Cross: Colour, Curiosities and Courtyards can be booked for £22 per group of 1-5 players on Secret City Trails’ website here.

Street Hunt: Colombia’s Finest | Review

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Can you spill the beans on what’s happening in Jim Robusta’s coffee company? Jim works alongside people with a shady past and has asked you to sniff out evidence of crime amongst the caffeine.

Rating: Exceptional!
Completion Time: 2-3 hours
Date Played: 9th May 2021
Party Size: 4
Location: Blackfriars, London
Recommended For: Adventure fans! Folks who want a real good challenge in London.

CW: This game contains themes of drugs and murder and may not be suitable for a younger audience.

I normally start these reviews with a bold proclamation of what I love about the theme. Such as “I LOVE MURDER MYSTERY” or “I LOVE THE 80S” but Colombia’s Finest is about a drug ring operating out of a coffee shop so err… umm… I LOVE COFFEE!

No but seriously, this was like nothing else I’ve ever played and I don’t get to say that too often on The Escape Roomer because I’ve played a lot! Everything from the excellent technology, to the plot, to the brilliant writing, to the ‘non-linear’ format was unique. Could it be my new favourite outdoor puzzle trail company? Why yes, it might just be!

The Story

A mysterious coffee shop, an infamous drug ring, and a dead body! Shocking!

Actually, I had no idea what to expect in terms of the plot, but it was a little more explicit than I expected… Read As: walking around the centre of London loudly talking about cocaine, and getting to check autopsy reports. We tackled this game as a team of 4 consisting of me, my parents, and my 11 year old brother which, despite the theme, he found the whole experience absolutely hilarious (and I hope didn’t understand everything that was going on… Though he probably did! Kids have internet these days.)

Your first contact is a man named Jim Robusta, who suspects something very shady is happening at the coffee shop he works. Thankfully, you have a network of informants – a kinda modern day “Baker Street Irregulars”, if you’re familiar with Sherlock Holmes. These people have small tidbits of information and it’s up to you to travel around to each one and speak to them to figure out what’s going on and whether there’s a murderer on the loose! As the story unfolds, Jim’s life gets put in danger and you must seriously pick up the pace if you want to save him in time.

The Route

The game starts a short distance from Blackfriars Station in an inconspicuous square next to a library, featuring a very cool copper sculpture! Here, I waited a while in the late-pandemic deserted streets one sunny morning for my family to arrive.

The whole route is around 4 miles or so, or at least that’s what my step counter said by the end! But here I’m using the term ‘route’ very loosely because the fact is, you can actually take any route you want to complete this game. Your informers pop up at random intervals and whilst there’s a suggestion of who you need to see when, you might prefer to follow the interwoven story threads in a different way. So long as you solve the mystery and speak to as many people as you like, the choice is entirely yours. Take an unconventional route and you might find yourself cracking the case even quicker!

Our chosen path took us around the new builds of the City of London, through squares and leafy green spaces and even down along the river as we searched for the scene of the crime. The game both starts and ends in more or less the same area and with optional breaks there’s plenty to see and do.

If, like us, you choose not to take any breaks – I’d recommend grabbing a coffee at the end. The final location is a street or two away from St. Pauls and the Paternoster Square area is packed with cafes – even in lockdown and on a Sunday – for coffee.

The Tech

The technology in this game gets it’s own section because I really enjoyed this part! I’d gone into the game like “yeah, I know the drill, I get puzzles texted to my phone…” BUT NO. Nothing like that at all! Instead you get a link to a fully interactive in-browser map. At first, one or two “points of interest” appear on the map, nudging you in a certain direction. The more you solve and discover, the more yellow dots appear on your map.

However, before you can interact with a yellow dot – which it typically one of your informants with information, you must solve a quick puzzle about the surrounding location. A question you could only know if you were actually there – so no cheating!

Each player has their own link and must also input answers into the game for a unique personal score at the end. However, the game updates at a similar pace. Things will happen at the same time across all your devices and we didn’t encounter any sort of lag by using three separate devices.

Solving the Puzzles

There are two types of puzzles in this game:

  • The puzzles you encounter at each geographic location, to prove you’re actually in that space in order to talk to your informant.
  • The over-arching mystery, where you must figure out who in the organisation has which role and who the murderer is.

For the first type, it’s quite simple! You’ll receive a small question or riddle about the location and, once arrived, must figure it out. Usually this involves looking around for a clue on a blue plaque, or a piece of wall art. They were riddles, sure, but none were tricky and felt more like a formality.

The second type was the opposite – very tricky indeed and involved all our deductive reasoning skills to figure out how to take down the expansive network of criminals!

After solving your final location based clue, the timer suddenly goes red and starts counting down the time you have left to submit your police report and you’re presented with a simple form to tick who is guilty of what, and why. We needed to go back and re-read everything, as each conversation we had with informants gave us some small piece of information that only made sense in the context of the bigger picture. Tricky!!

Overall

We cracked the case! Woohoo! Take that, murderer!

It was touch and go for a bit at the end and yes, I did have to break into a run to reach the last location – making for a really epic and out-of-breath finale. But overall? This experience was AWESOME. I genuinely can’t praise it enough. We had a really sunny day for it, no technology issues, and enjoyed an absolutely lovely coffee at the end as we continued chatting about the case well into the afternoon.

I think what the two creators (London-based couple Annaliza and Tony) have created is totally unique in the market and this would be a huge hit for office teams, groups of friends, and heck even families (though maybe not your 11 year old brother, unless he’s cool with this kinda stuff). I had a wonderful day out and I absolutely recommend this. Five stars!

Colombia’s Finest can be booked for £15 / player on Street Hunt’s website here.

They have also kindly provided me with a promo code for 20% off for The Escape Roomer readers: “THEESCAPEROOMER20”