Why I Love Escape Rooms.
“We should probably get out of here… shouldn’t we?”
Have you ever wanted an activity you could do with your close of friends that would simultaneously stress everybody out but at the same time cause all of you to get closer? Well, in this modern age, a brand new trend has started to occur a lot more, kind of in the spirit of how theme parks would be. Where everyone decides to contribute to the same ride and experience it all together. These are escape rooms.
I. The Rundown — How Do You Play? How Do They Work?
As the name implies, a group of friends is tasked to escape a room within a certain time limit. Generally most of these have a runtime of 60 minutes exactly, some do vary depending on difficulty and scale. After completely registering every member and arriving on time to the said “escape room building”. Game Masters/GMs prompt everybody about what sort of mysterious narrative info surrounds the room you are about to enter within your given timeframe. Purposely, if you listen in carefully, some of the initial prompt can carry some of the most subtle hints to the puzzles within the room. Also, as an additional pointer, and also to just increase the amount of stress and thinking, no one is allowed to have their phones on them. In order to prevent the searching of useful information, otherwise cheating.
According to the rulesets and approaches of some companies, sometimes the very start can be a lot more stressful than others once — entering commences. It is completely reliant on theme though, this makes sense in line with horror/Halloween themed rooms such as THE BASEMENT. When you enter the premise, scenarios like this are possible: you are chained to the floor at the start, your team is stuck in a singular jail cell, or team members are separated from you.
That is used to amplify the immersion and the atmosphere of the room, which may also be guaranteed to scare/shock certain members depending on how sensitive they are. Honestly, to me, that actually makes the room a lot more exciting, in spite of such a dark entrance.
One of the most important guidelines of escape rooms is that you need to be aware of what parts of the environment is ‘legitimately interactive’. Given that there are certain times where curiosity will go a little too far in some senses causing damage to the room’s durability. So be cautious and smart about what you touch and what doors you move, usually they mark this with some sort of colored tape.
If you find yourself stuck in a confusing scenario with a puzzle, all companies allow for teams to ask for hints in the time of need as the clock in each room slowly ticks down. Some companies allow more than others.
That seems to be all the information you need concerning this activity, now I want to share some of my thoughts for some rooms I have experienced.
[DISCLAIMER: Slight spoilers for two rooms are up ahead, if you plan to do these rooms: Senator Payne @ 60OUT Escape Rooms or The Cabin @ The Room please read at your own risk] — Thank you.
II. The First of Many
A big question is — are all escape rooms created equal? Sadly not, it is extremely dependent on the customer service, the quality of the rooms; decor, the difficulty of the puzzles, and just the overall appeal to the experience as a whole.
Let me talk about my first ever Escape Room experience — it happened 2 years ago at The Room in their level named The Cabin. Now generally whenever people do escape rooms as groups, it is best to do these blind for both the newcomers and seasoned players because it feels fresh and completely unexplored.
Synopsis:
“This is an abandoned camping cabin located deep within the mountains and the owner had been rumored to be a cannibal, uncover the mystery behind the murders that happened there. If you don’t escape in time, you will the cannibal’s next victims. Good luck.”
After the prompt our group of 7 members was lead back to the front of the company’s building where a door stood there. Once they asked for the last time if we were ready, they unlocked the door and put us into this small jail cell.
Immediately, everybody attempted to move around in the small space and examined what was around them. Mind you (though you probably already knew by now…) this was a horror-themed room. After about five to seven minutes pass by we figured that by turning the bars on the handles of the jail cell you could uncover a code that was used for the door of the cell.
The secondary section of the same room had this large horizontal freezer laying on the floor. Looking at it briefly everybody felt very unsettled, thinking of what would pop out if opened. Luckily, nothing actually but it did lead elsewhere. The immersion made each member feel uncertain of what was on the other side so ‘one brave soul’ or perhaps a couple had to see what was on the other side. Three of our members crawled through the freezer and was able to unlock the door from the other side which exposed us to actual cabin part of the room.
There was this fake body on a chair straight away from the door and I immediately freaked out once I saw it; a really hilarious moment. This was after everybody else already saw it. I am forever going to remember that moment.
One of my absolute favorite aspects of escape rooms is the willingness to explore and try options out. Information carry over was incredibly essential from segment to segment, there was this pretty cool interaction where we had to pull an old flip phone from the body and relay information from that to unlock another safe and then somehow make our way out of the cabin.
Long story short… unfortunately we actually did not make it out of the room successfully. We were nearly one interaction away but could not react fast enough and time slipped away. (We did technically get chainsawed limb from limb in the narrative so that sucks). From this, we carried heavy passion to pass the next room we did, but I have done quite a few so now I will talk about one scenario with a whole nother group and how we successfully escaped.
III. Experience Counts
Let us turn the tables a bit, so, fast forward a couple more months and most of my family has experienced quite a few escape rooms. We understand how they work and approaching them. My Dad and I decide to take a couple of the adults who have never experienced one before to one this time.
The things that is incredibly intriguing about escape rooms is how group dynamics work in tandem with the underlying age of the unit. There could be high school students, some middle school kids could be in there, or it could be all adults, or a combination of all three age groups. This interesting sociological element really turns gears for how a team flows throughout a room, it is truly fascinating. Makes me wonder how success rates are anchored in response to what age groups are a common denominator or perhaps even an outlier. I have so many curious questions about that.
Anyway, so I was essentially the youngest of the group of seven members. This was definitely an cool dynamic because the approach was a bit different and felt more methodical compared to other ways of dissecting a room.
Synopsis:
“Senator Payne has been carrying secret methods behind the government for many years and it seems incredibly shady, figure out what he is doing before it is too late and relay the information back to the President of the United States.”
Through this context, we started off in this awfully ‘normal’ government office — so we thought, it definitely took a really dark turn for the worst. In the first segment of the government there quite a few standout interactions which included: saying something while a holding a ring and sitting on the center chair, placing artifacts in a specific order to unlock the door, and changing clock faces in accordance to information found elsewhere.
So what’s this dark reveal I speak of? In the end, it turns out Senator Payne was actually a satanic worshipper and behind his office was this disgusting cult worship area. It was a golden moment, when we discovered this everybody was just like: “Oh my god :o… really!?” then we ventured off and tried to figure out what to do.
The room was littered with severed heads on the wall to create sculptures, the entire section was covered in blood, and star formations covered each part of wall giving us clues in order to get the launch codes we needed. The final section definitely made us uncomfortable because obviously never expected to go in such a direction.
Interesting puzzle concepts included: team members sticking their hands though a severed head sculpture and attempting to get a fragment of a key through a maze, putting eyes back in a sculpture and activating it, and ripping out the heart of a body to finish the room.
Regardless of escaping the room or not, witnessing ‘first-timers’ do escape rooms is exhilarating. It is not unusual at all, that if you happen to fail the room with the newcomers they are completely motivated to do another room. Which I think is awesome, for that redemption.
IV. Conclusion
No doubt in my mind I think this one of thee greatest activities for teambuilding, getting closer to your friends, and just having a lot of fun exploring the unexplored. It gets your mind going and puts everybody’s best idea of perception together as one. It is seriously really fun and I think everybody should try it — with this in mind I hope you do in the future :) Happy Escaping!
“Stay Honest” — Codex of Codex Journalism
