I have played a videogame in real life: escape room

I made this post to share a experience.

The other day the people of my office gathered together to celebrate Xmax by going to some sort of game.

We where divided in two groups and put into a room. There was items in the room, old books, a beed, logs, … we decyphered what they mean to open a look, that had a key to other puzzle that we solved to other puzzle that opened a door to other room. This new room was filled with puzzles too. And after that another two rooms of solving puzzles. So I guest that this is exactly like these “escape room” games, but in real life and faster because you play with other people.

The whole experience was hilarious and very interesting. Despite the womens in the office winning *shake fist*.

Heres the website for the activity (in spanish).

These are great fun. I’ve done two myself. One escape, one failed at the last puzzle :( An hour flies by.

Yeah, these really are a blast with friends. Highly recommended!

Agree, these are becoming a common birthday gift in my group of friends. They are really popular in Spain now, with even smallish cities having one or two places where you can experience this.

I understand this is popular in Japan as well.

Near us there is one where you are placed in a room with a zombie chained to a wall. Every 10 minutes there is some slack provided to the chain, and after sixty minutes you are the zombie’s dinner…unless you discover the way out, I believe it is for a party of 6.

Also very popular in China among groups of 20-somethings and corporate office activities for team building. Many malls have one in a corner of a basement.

It is so nice to hear about a positive activity being so globally popular. We just got one in our town, and I hope to check it out soon. I really enjoyed the one we did in LA. I was also very happy with how our group of four interacted with a group of four randoms.

Amazingly we have three of these companies around here. I’ve only done one room (with a bunch of teenage girls for a b-day party, no less) and it was a blast.

There are several in the area by me, have yet to do one, but have already talked to some friends about doing one next year.

Never seen one in Japan (but I avoid Tokyo like the plague, so that’s like not really living in Japan I guess), while I caught sights of a couple of those in Paris, and was surprised at how affordable they seemed to be (like 150 euros, split amongst participants).
Quite looking forward to try one now, reading Teiman’s experience!

I’ve done a few, it’s very venue specific on if it’s fun or not. One place we’ve gone to several times is really high quality and fun puzzles, some other places we’ve gone it has been pretty meh.

Some of you lucky people probably live in a city that will have the Zelda escape room but I am not one of them :(

Heh. They just did a segment on one of these on the local TV news just tonight, but I missed where it was located.
The people they showed doing it looked like they were having a lot of fun, and I am intrigued, even though I don’t normally get out much. My gf has been begging me to take her to “something fun”, and this could be just the ticket.

Is this like … an animatronic zombie, or a real person (employee of the room escape place) playing a zombie character?

i’ve gone to a couple and mostly failed these escape room exercises. the problem was one of the ones i attended, an occult murder (my first one) a bunch of us misunderstood the point and spent the time figuring out the lore/clues etc.

it was “just” (at least in my case) a number hunt to unlock the combination door to exit.

This is the first I’ve heard of these, but they sound like fun. Google tells me there’s a company doing this not far from UA, and one of their offerings sounds like an interesting twist:

We’re having a little gathering with some friends today and I’ll be sure to bring it up.

It’s an actor - I am sure that is a much cheaper investment ;>

Evidently a “host” is in the room with you and it sounds like he has a script. Here’s a Yelp for the place:

and their site:

http://roomescapeadventures.com/

I went to one about a month ago, part of a corporate night out when I was visiting our St Louis office.

Great fun, and cleverly done. The place we went had a number of escape rooms (enough that dividing us into groups I believe we were in three different rooms with about 8 of us in each room). I liked the way they monitored us via camera and would give us a hint on a monitor in the room if we needed to be steered in the right direction. We finished with about 3 minutes to spare.

I’d definitely recommend it, it was pretty inexpensive too as a group outing (about $25 each, not bad for a unique and memorable experience!).

The guy who ran our room said it seems to work best with a critical mass (so think about that, in our case, seven or eight folks in a room, and if you did it with three or four you would have been hard pressed to figure out all the puzzles, etc.). And I was thinking to myself that it would be good to have folks like us (gamers, used to puzzling, etc, or just some smart folks) in the group.

My extended family (8 people from 17 to 79) did one recently. Like Rei’s experience it was basically a hidden object search for lock combinations but it was fun. We all liked the theme overlay but luckily we didn’t spend too much time focused on it.

We came out thinking that 8 people was a few too many; six seems like it might be perfect.

yeah i was in it to ‘solve a story’ but it was ‘only’ a number hunt for the lock on the door.

2 people may be too few. Part of the beaty of this experiment is how stuff that seems obvious to some people are impenetrable to others.

On the one I did there was a puzzle with two horsesoes glued to a wall, and I instantly recognized that has we had to touch both, making a chain with our hands, so electricity would go from one to another.