In Escape Rooms, Video Games Meet Real Life

I did the two permanent room escapes run by Real Escape Game/SCRAP in San Francisco (in the New People mall in Japantown), namely Escape from the Mysterious Room and Escape from the Time Travel Lab. They were great fun. (My teams didn't manage to escape from either of them.)

I also did their Escape from the Bank (themed after the aftermath of a bank robbery), where I think my team was the only one to make it out. That event is possibly less awesome because you're seated at a table in a big hall with a lot of other teams around you, rather than exploring small room all by yourselves.

Now I'm looking forward to trying the games in New York City!

It's interesting how much LARP ideas are beginning to diffuse into general culture. Lastly I was talking to someone who basically organized themed mini-LARPs for corporate teams. Since these are audiences who generally aren't familiar with the medium, they're always amazed.

I think as our natural environment continues to become safer and more virtualized, these immersive adventures and ARGs will become more popular and mainstream.

These are really popular in China Mainland as well since about 2 years ago. People just create rooms at their own places and put ads on WeiBo to get people to come.

Are they the same every time or is there an element of randomness in the puzzles and codes?

It'd be interesting if they could be random enough that someone couldn't spoil it for others, and people could use AR or just wi-fi to research clues?

These are awesome. I did a couple in Warsaw, one in Budapest and now one in Prague.

I use it mostly as a 2nd/3rd date to find out how people handle stress/cooperate, but they're really fun too.

We've been working with "escape room" game event organizers like SCRAP for a while now. They're incredibly popular on our "Netflix for Events" service. I've done a handful and can certainly attest to this "video games in real life" trend in events from traditional scavenger hunts to a maze that you have to solve from the third person. I love this intersection of technology and real life entertainment. Folsom Street Foundry in SoMA has even started hosting weekly social game nights on Tuesdays

There's an entertaining Spanish film called La Habitación de Fermat (Fermat's Room) which deals with this.

"Four mathematicians who do not know each other are invited by a mysterious host on the pretext of resolving a great enigma. The room in which they find themselves turns out to be a shrinking room..."

Here's the trailer (w/ subs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fS74Y-qBs

This escape the room as a live event started in Hong kong a few years ago. Glad to see it finally come here.

These are popular here in Taiwan, I think there's like 1 every day - held by many different organizations. The concept's the same - solve puzzles before the time runs outs.

Different organizations go to different lengths to make the activity feel more immersive, some are great, some are meh. Sometimes the group is so big, it can get very chaotic with everyone running around looking for clues.

The only downside is once they reveal the clues/answers, it can be frustrating if they were impossible to solve in the first place.

I was at the Escape from the Moon Base [1] in SF two weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. I went with some coworkers, but I'd also recommend going with friends, and would definitely participate again.

The puzzles are fairly challenging (no one in my session of 30 teams/180 people) finished with an entirely correct solution, so it's satisfying when your team solves certain parts.

[1] http://realescapegame.com/sf07_mb/

I played the Escape from Time Travel Lab as a team building exercise and it was an awesome experience - I totally recommend it. I just wish they would put out more games!

Sounds somewhat like murder mystery dinner parties. Also: why does NYT hijack the left and right arrows to take me away to another article?

One of the hardest things about these "escape from the room" games is keeping all the puzzles and clues organized, and sharing progress across the whole team. It's a pretty great exercise in project mgmt and teamwork.

It's not exactly the same, but TrueDungeon has a similar premise of "a small group of people attempts to figure out puzzles together to get through something".

For a zombie themed escape, check out:

http://roomescapeadventures.com/

This reminds me of a popular visual novel game, "9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors".

Boring, in "In Shadows" (www.inshadows.asia) video games meet real life.