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'Escape Rooms' Challenge Players To Solve Puzzles To Get Out

151 points by okfine 11y ago

antonmaju 11y ago
Zero Escape in real life sounds awesome
maaaats 11y ago
I found a game like this in eastern Europe some years ago, and really loved it. Ended up going to everyone I found in the city with my family. Now most cities in Europe has them. Great activity for team-building. One thing I find interesting is that everywhere these games show up, they top the TripAdvisor rankings.
j_jochem 11y ago
I beta-tested one of these in my town. Was quite a lot of fun, but our group solved it too fast (I think we finished after 30 minutes while the room was planned to take about 50 minutes to solve). They fixed this afterwards. The fast-paced group problem solving is quite enjoyable, although I still think it's not worth the 20 € / person they usually ask.
- qntm 11y ago
  I find one of the most fascinating questions about constructing an escape room is how exactly you calibrate the difficulty for different groups of people. Some people will finish the room in 30 minutes like you, but others will be totally stumped after 50 minutes despite it being the exact same room. Both of the rooms I've done had a hints system so a staff member overseeing the game through cameras could send a hint any time we dropped significantly behind schedule. One of them had a two-room system where you had to solve the first room to get to the second room, and in the second room I believe one or two of the locks had been unlocked ahead of time manually by a staff member, based on how quickly we solved the first room. Of course every time anybody takes the challenge you acquire more data, and keeping an eye on the emerging patterns must be absolutely critical to engineer an enjoyable challenge for the maximum number of different people. Metrics!
asgard1024 11y ago
In Czech Republic, we have many puzzle hunts per year. The "escape room" fad also came here, it seems similar; I haven't tried it, but it seems really overpriced. Typical price for 20-hour puzzle hunt is about $3-5 per person. Escape room costs 1 hour for about $30. The room is probably much better done, but I would bet you would have more fun puzzle solving in a more traditional puzzle hunt.
- dkopi 11y ago
  20 hours is quite a lot of time to devout. An escape room provides a 1 hour intensive experience. It's not only about solving puzzles, it's also about the adrenaline (Time limits do that), team building and cooperation, and functioning under stress. Just came back from a 5 day vacation in Prague. We went to 5 different escape rooms during that vacation. It comes out to about $10 a person for a group of 5. Money well spent for an intensive hour of fun.
  - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
    To be more specific about the timing, it is 20 hours as in "starting Saturday afternoon and ending Sunday noon". I agree that it's tough on parents who cannot leave for a weekend here and there; the organizing teams are usually a mix of devoted fans and university students. There is a lot of stress involved in the puzzle hunts as well -- you have to solve the toughest puzzles at around 3am in the woods, some even in November. Struggling with fatigue (personally at around 8am) and not giving up is a big part of that, and if your team wants to be among the top 10, speed is a very big issue. The Czechs who like puzzle hunts (such as me) will likely prefer them over room escapes as they are all cheap, non-profit, community events with a good atmosphere, whereas the room escapes are more of a product that aims at the workforce (many room escapes talk about team building in their brochures) and the prices reflect that. The main downside for the foreign audience is that most Czech puzzle hunts I attended required fluency in Czech in a non-trivial way -- encoding messages in proverbs, conjugation, wordplay and so on. It's tricky; foreigners don't know about our puzzle hunts (it's a purely local custom), so they do not want to attend -- and the organizers feel that having them in Czech is enough.
ragebol 11y ago
Escape rooms are great fun! I did a couple, in Den Bosch and Nijmegen, Netherlands. Tip: don't go to a new one directly but only after a few months or so, so that the room can be tested and tuned in difficulty. Also, wear and tear can reveal some clues and correct solutions, so in those few months, everything gets tried and thus the overall wear and tear masks the correct solutions. It's expensive though, 20€/person for an hour or less if you're fast is relatively steep.
anuj_nm 11y ago
I've tried a bunch of these in Vancouver, Seattle and Mumbai. Most of them have been incredible. If you're the kind of person who enjoys the rush of solving puzzles under a timer, you would love this. Also, one set of rooms in Vancouver hired set designers to build the rooms (making them very realistic), and hired actors to help run the business. The actors really add to the immersive experience since they pretend to be part of the puzzle. But yeah, I don't understand how scalable the financial model is, since the owners would have to keep recycling the rooms every few months.
- xyzzyz 11y ago
  Recycling is really less necessary than it would seem. There are >50 escape rooms in Warsaw. If I visit one every two weeks, I'd start running out of options only after two years. Going to escape room twice a month is pretty often anyway...
  - anuj_nm 11y ago
    I didn't realise that one city's market could be large enough to support that many. In Vancouver I've only seen 5-6 of them, and in Mumbai where this just started, I only know of one company running them. Yes, if you have >50, recycling won't be a problem.
regehr 11y ago
HintHunt in Paris is awesome.
- MIKarlsen 11y ago
  Tried London - was also a blast! Going to the local "Escape Factory" in Aarhus, Denmark in a few weeks with work. Fairly new location with a "Enigma" (WW2) themed room. Hope it can deliver!
spencertg1 11y ago
Cluequest is a great puzzle room in london. I wasn't that excited about doing it but once you're inside with some friends it gets super competitive and fun!! Really interesting business problem as well about how to maintain interest and grow customer lifetime value. Possibly a problem that could be solved by super fast iteration of rooms so that a customer is never going to need to do the same room twice.......? I guess it is much like any theme park. You need to continuously update and improve the attractions.
listic 11y ago
I've just been handed a flyer for escape room here in St.-Petersburg, Russia. Didn't know it's such a popular thing in the world right now.
sambe 11y ago
Really enjoy these but the quality varies immensely. In some they fail to setup the equipment properly or have weird clues and it ruins the whole thing. They are reasonably expensive (here 80-140EUR for an hour between 4-8 people). It's been a massive fad for a year or more in Europe, seems like they have to capitalise on as many TripAdvisor reviews as possible before it loses popularity.
justifier 11y ago
i had a friend invite me along to enjoy one of these rooms in nyc the puzzle layout was such that there were some 30-40 individual steps that needed to be taken that would culminate in a four digit combination you then use the four digit combination on a lock securing the lid of a box that contained a button that opened the exit the lock was a wheel lock where each wheel had 7 faces, 0 to 6 about halfway through the game the group had found the first 2 values of the combination i explained to my friend that math could get us out at 7 faces and four wheels your looking at: #!/usr/bin/env python3 import itertools len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=4))) #2401 but we were down to only two wheels left len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=2))) #49 all we had to do was try the 49 different possibilities for the lock, essentially brute forcing my friend was ecstatic and encouraged me to do it, but when i went over to the lock and started trying the different combinations a staffer came up to us and stopped us asking: 'do you really want to win that way?' my friend and i laughed at the indirect math shaming and returned to the group looking for clues eventually the timer ran out before the group could solve all of the riddles to find the last two digits of the combination edit: copypasta err
- jgrahamc 11y ago
  Wait, you used python, len, list, itertools to calculate 7 x 7? More seriously, calculating 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 reminded me of this old blog post on squaring two digit numbers in your head: http://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-your-head.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-yo...
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Seeing as there is a copied 4 in that calculation, they probably didn't use the code.
  - justifier 11y ago
    hardly necessary, the code is just meant to explain the reasoning with manipulable variance but i offer it to you for future use under the GPL
fredmonroe 11y ago
Cool/clever escape room company in Denver... https://www.puzzah.com/ https://www.puzzah.com/ One of the founders, Derek, is an interesting guy and built an impressive tech stack that drives the rooms with a very high degree of automation. I think most HN'ers would enjoy speaking with him about it.
- thehigherlife 11y ago
  We did one of his puzzles while we were in Denver too and had a blast. He even took some time after to discuss some of the tech.
Aardwolf 11y ago
There are many flash games like this on the internet - but real life sounds way cooler :) I wonder now which came first, the computer games or the real life escape rooms... I saw another comment mentioning 4-digit codes. For some reason, every single such computer game I played also involved a 4-digit code, as if that's some kind of obligatory thing to have. So the 4-digit thing kind of lost its originality, I wonder why it keeps being present in such games?
- olalonde 11y ago
  SOS Labyrinthe in Montreal's Old Port which has a similar concept has been around since 1991. http://en.soslabyrinthe.com http://en.soslabyrinthe.com
- fallinghawks 11y ago
  I think the puzzle style in real-life rooms came from Japanese Flash games, starting with Crimson Room, but I may be biased since the real-life rooms I've played are run by Japanese/Asians. (Are you aardwolf on eg24?)
trentmb 11y ago
Man, I don't think I'm clever enough to enjoy these. How often do they resort to P&C adventure game logic?
valdiorn 11y ago
Is this not a huge thing yet in america? I've done like six or seven of these here in London. Most of them are good fun. There seem to be new ones starting up every month as well.
- scheda 11y ago
  Not yet, but they're getting to be. I've seen a few pop up for Halloween this year then there's a few touristy cities out there that permanently have them.
MikevHoenselaar 11y ago
Currently there are almost 250 escaperooms in the Netherlands. With 1.7 new escaperooms being added every month I can safely say it's going fast in the Netherlands. Lots of great ones as well! The scene is a lot further than in the rest of the world. US has +/- 500 rooms. NL 250 :). And I know 10 more rooms will open this year for sure. I played my first room in 2013 and started working on our escaperoom platform Escape Rooms Nederland beginning of this year. Biggest platform about escaperooms with reviews, news and comparison. Played around 40 rooms myself. Really love this phenomenon. Hopefully it will stick around. If you ever visit the Netherlands and want to know the best one in your area. Let me know. A new thing is growing popularity as well, Prison Island. You should check it out as well.
- hellofunk 11y ago
  I'm near the Netherlands, if you have advice on the good ones, let me know.
- mati 11y ago
  Can you elaborate on the Prison Island thing? What is that?
- speleding 11y ago
  I run an appointment scheduling site that is used by many escape rooms (supersaas) so I have a pretty good overview where they start: The Netherlands is indeed leading the pack but so far we are seeing many more in Europe than in the US, and almost none in Asia. Conversely, we see that the number of dog training classes in US is 5 times higher than in Europe :-)
guard-of-terra 11y ago
It does not have to be about escape. Why not find something in the room instead, hidden behind set of puzzles? Another popular thing is location games. You receive a book of puzzles in the form of "find X on a street Y near house Z" (some unusual features). You then need to solve travelling salesman problem while solving puzzles and recording answers. Some puzzle sets are bike-oriented, some assume you travel by public transport, some car-oriented.
boucher 11y ago
Here's the most popular company in SF that runs these: http://realescapegame.com/ http://realescapegame.com/ They are an offshoot of the Japanese division. All of their games are really well done. There are several other places in the bay area doing this now too, this one in Richmond is also great: http://letsescapesf.com/ http://letsescapesf.com/
- arjie 11y ago
  We did the Time Travel one at Real Escape and it was great fun. Very exciting. There's another at http://paniqentertainment.com/sanfrancisco http://paniqentertainment.com/sanfrancisco that was all right. Definitely liked the Real Escape one more. The operators all act as if they're part of the whole thing.
- fallinghawks 11y ago
  I played Escape From the Mysterious Room here a couple years ago. Great fun, great puzzles. If you're familiar with Japanese escape-the-room Flash games, the puzzles are very similar.
arbitrage314 11y ago
I just did the one in Nashville. It was a lot of fun, but it was very expensive (~$35), and they also made us solve the puzzle with a bunch of strangers (in order to fill up the room entirely). The good part of this is that they're making $280 per hour (8 x $35) off of their escape room, and at those prices, there should be many, many more of them soon (which will bring down the price to its equilibrium, which I assume is far lower).
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Right -- though that is $280 per hour that they're booked. I'm guessing these don't have repeat business very much, unfortunately (I think the concept is awesome!) This is one of my favorite online escape games: http://jayisgames.com/games/sagrarios-room/index.php http://jayisgames.com/games/sagrarios-room/index.php
  - fallinghawks 11y ago
    This is a really good one, but I think Neutral is pretty much the champion. http://neutralxe.net/esc/index.html http://neutralxe.net/esc/index.html
evan_ 11y ago
There was a Science Channel show that aired over the summer called "Race to Escape" that followed two teams as they try to escape themed rooms using clues- it was a lot of fun to watch, though the omnipotent cameras led to a lot of yelling at the TV as you saw the obvious clue that the contestants kept overlooking.
panglott 11y ago
So this is like True Dungeon gone mainstream?
dougdonohoe 11y ago
There are 2 or 3 escape rooms in Cleveland and 2 in Pittsburgh. I've done one in each city - they were decent, but in both cases many of the clues were for 3-digit combo locks which were easy to brute-force after getting some of the clues. Working with strangers is also interesting (most have a 8 or 10 person quota per room). Anyhow, they are pretty fun. It's like Myst in real life.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Seems a bit like Laser Tag for the 21st century. In general I think the space of "real life + tech juice" sort of things is a pretty under-exploited market segment. From pacman on the streets of NYC to Ingress to Puzzle Rooms to Geocaching. It seems like a lot of different ways to take this.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Every one I've gone to, the "tech" was incredibly minimal.
  - ChuckMcM 11y ago
    To be fair the "tech" of laser tag is pretty minimal too :-) but its a fair point. Makes me wonder if there is a business in making props for these rooms with a bit more flash.
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  > In general I think the space of "real life + tech juice" sort of things is a pretty under-exploited market segment. Spot on, IMO. If you haven't heard of it, Topgolf[0] is taking on this role in the driving range world. [0] http://topgolf.com/us/play/games/ http://topgolf.com/us/play/games/
peeters 11y ago
I've done one of these, and what I found myself was that the challenge wasn't just solving the problem, but also promoting a social dynamic that allowed everyone to participate in the problem solving. That meant being intentionally ignorant to certain aspects of the puzzles to force participation from the quieter people in the group.
IvyMike 11y ago
My girlfriend and I have gone to a bunch of these in LA. They range from little strip mall places with a bunch of janky puzzles with poorly translated instructions to fully decorated and themed rooms with actors moving the action along. Check reviews on Yelp first. If you want to jump in, one of my favorites is "Trapped in a room with a zombie". They were featured on Big Bang Theory (don't hold this against them, and the room is nothing like portrayed in the show) and it's really well done--our zombie was hilarious. They have rooms in Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, LA, NY, Philly, and Seattle: http://roomescapeadventures.com/ http://roomescapeadventures.com/ In LA specifically, the Race/LA rooms are great: http://escaperoomla.com/ http://escaperoomla.com/ (Race/LA also puts on scavenger hunts which are also worth a shot.) (Not associated in any way with these rooms, just a huge fan of the concept.)
peeters 11y ago
So, my story about one of these. Had a great time; were on the verge of winning. All of the puzzles had resulted in us finding a cellphone. We find the 4-digit pin to unlock it. With a minute to go, we get into the phone and find there's one new voicemail on the phone. We hold 1 for voicemail, and hear: "This account is currently out of funds. To complete this call, please add credit to the account or place a collect call." So the buzzer runs out as we are trying to remember how to make a collect call (to voicemail no less). Afterwards we asked the staffer how we were supposed to fetch the voicemail, and she said "wait, there was a voicemail on the phone?" Turns out there was also an already-read text message on the phone that we were supposed to look at, but we were successfully red-herringed by some random person leaving a message at the wrong number.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  I feel like your staffer should have noticed what you were doing; every time I've done one of these, the staffers were usually fairly attentive, and would guide us away from the inadvertent red herrings like this.
  - peeters 11y ago
    How was the setup for you? For us I think there were cameras in each room, and a radio we could use to ask the staffer clarifications about the game itself. But they weren't present in the room itself and I don't think they had audio. I agree you need a hands on approach to guiding. For example, in the same game we found a pencil but the lead was broken. So we asked "is the lead supposed to be broken; if not I have a pen in my pocket..." and they gave an emphatic "yes it's part of the challenge". So when other obstacles came up we of course assumed they were part of the challenge too.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      In every one I've done, there was a staffer present in the room; we were also allowed to ask them three questions per game, and in one variant, each question would dock us X minutes off the clock.
leesalminen 11y ago
I've taken my company twice to the Enigma rooms in Boulder. We made it out both times, had a blast and learned more about each other's strength and weaknesses. I think I had the most fun sitting back and watching everyone come together and solve a problem.
Yhippa 11y ago
Any recommended good ones in Washington DC?
- thoth 11y ago
  There are several choices. I've been to the DC Escape Room Live, but not the Alexandria, VA site: https://www.escaperoomlive.com/ https://www.escaperoomlive.com/ I've also been to the MD suburbs for Zombie Escape Room (this was in College Park, MD when we did it but it looks like it relocated): http://www.charmcityroomescapes.com/ http://www.charmcityroomescapes.com/ Of those two, my group enjoyed the Zombie escape a lot more. That's because the actress playing the zombie was excellent and she provided the extra challenge of avoid contact and slowly reaching more and more of the room. There is also Escape Artists DC, with 3 different setups: http://www.escapeartistdc.com/ http://www.escapeartistdc.com/ I haven't been to that one yet. Again in the MD suburbs, my friends and I are about to go to this one literally next weekend, Escape This Live: http://www.escapethislive.com/mainpage1/ http://www.escapethislive.com/mainpage1/ And there are two more I haven't checked out yet: Great Escape Room DC: http://thegreatescaperoom.com/washington-d-c/ http://thegreatescaperoom.com/washington-d-c/ Escape the Room DC: http://www.escapetheroomdc.com/index.html http://www.escapetheroomdc.com/index.html
edc117 11y ago
Definitely need to plan a trip to see one or two of these with a few friends. I'd love to see something like this done with the Occulus or some similar VR platform, though I doubt it'd have the thrill of the actual experience.
zarvox 11y ago
For folks looking for escape rooms all over the world: take a look at http://escaperoomdirectory.com/ http://escaperoomdirectory.com/
syaz1 11y ago
Went to a few of these in Malaysia. Really good for team building but the challenge itself is either too hard or too easy. There is no replay value either because the staffs are so eager to spoil the solutions and tricks after a game. Definitely give it a try though. Go to the bigger ones because they tend to have space for neat tricks like sliding door/book shelves etc.
fisk 11y ago
'"This is something that someone in their early 20s or late 20s or early 30s can go do with their friends," Ressel says.' I get that everyone still goes after the 'cool' demographic narrowly like sheep, but I hope he felt really foolish for saying that out loud. Of course, if his name is Kayden, he's likely very young and his dad has money and he may not have that sort of perspective/awareness at all yet.
- shostack 11y ago
  What point are you trying to make exactly? Targeting that demographic makes a ton of business sense. These are young people who like to go out and have fun with their friends and have disposable income. They are also typically tech savvy and are likely to spread the word through social channels, leave Yelp reviews, etc. That isn't "going after the 'cool' demographic narrowly like sheep." It's knowing which target audience to focus on to maximize the chance of success for your business. While you could make an educated assumption about his age based on how common that name is among certain demographics, the jab about "his dad has money" is just plain trolling, based on absolutely nothing in the article, and adds zero value to the conversation. From the article: "It's a social thing to do on a Friday night that isn't going to a bar and getting drunk. And everyone has to put their phones away and everyone has to interact with each other." We need more of this kind of thinking and less jealous whining like the parent poster.
  - shard 11y ago
    Although Fisk was a bit overzealous I'm his attack on the statement, I do agree on his point about the ageism implicit in that statement. I don't see anything about escape rooms which makes people above early 30s unsuited as customers. If the person had said "This is something that white and Asian people can go do with their friends", or "This is something that men can go do with their friends", it would sound segregating and uninviting, and I submit that saying "This is soemthing that someone in their early 20s or late 20s or early 30s can go do with their friends" is just as segregating and uninviting.
  - deleted 11y ago
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crazcarl 11y ago
I highly recommend visiting Mr X in Shanghai if you have the opportunity. It blew the two that I've done in the US out of the water.
MIKarlsen 11y ago
Holy moly. I had no idea this was such a hot topic. I tried "HintHunt" in London two years ago and loved it. Back in Aarhus, Denmark where I'm from, we just got our own version called "Escape Factory". I'm gonna try it with work in a few weeks. I would seem like something that could easily be turned into a good business given the popularity-level, and the ability to simply franchise the concept on a global scale with the same rooms and structures. Only "problem" would perhaps be that it's not something you do again and again, which would either mean rooms would have to be retired or that your business-model would have to rely heavily on activating new customers over and over.
anonu 11y ago
The article says "And everyone has to put their phones away and everyone has to interact with each other". I've done two escape the rooms in NYC (got out both times just in the nick of time btw). In both cases the cellphones were instrumental, whether it was for searching or reading QR codes for example. I don't think you should go into some of these rooms thinking you can't use your phone since in many cases you need it.... (short of searching for a walkthrough which is cheating IMHO)
wgh000 11y ago
In Milan, Italy, this summer also the Escape Room trend exploded and 12 companies opened with one or more rooms. We have been in http://www.effugio.it http://www.effugio.it and http://enigmaroom.it http://enigmaroom.it Really nice!

151 points by okfine 11y ago

Zero Escape in real life sounds awesome

I found a game like this in eastern Europe some years ago, and really loved it. Ended up going to everyone I found in the city with my family. Now most cities in Europe has them. Great activity for team-building. One thing I find interesting is that everywhere these games show up, they top the TripAdvisor rankings.

j_jochem 11y ago

I beta-tested one of these in my town. Was quite a lot of fun, but our group solved it too fast (I think we finished after 30 minutes while the room was planned to take about 50 minutes to solve). They fixed this afterwards. The fast-paced group problem solving is quite enjoyable, although I still think it's not worth the 20 € / person they usually ask.

qntm 11y ago
I find one of the most fascinating questions about constructing an escape room is how exactly you calibrate the difficulty for different groups of people. Some people will finish the room in 30 minutes like you, but others will be totally stumped after 50 minutes despite it being the exact same room. Both of the rooms I've done had a hints system so a staff member overseeing the game through cameras could send a hint any time we dropped significantly behind schedule. One of them had a two-room system where you had to solve the first room to get to the second room, and in the second room I believe one or two of the locks had been unlocked ahead of time manually by a staff member, based on how quickly we solved the first room. Of course every time anybody takes the challenge you acquire more data, and keeping an eye on the emerging patterns must be absolutely critical to engineer an enjoyable challenge for the maximum number of different people. Metrics!

asgard1024 11y ago

In Czech Republic, we have many puzzle hunts per year. The "escape room" fad also came here, it seems similar; I haven't tried it, but it seems really overpriced. Typical price for 20-hour puzzle hunt is about $3-5 per person. Escape room costs 1 hour for about $30. The room is probably much better done, but I would bet you would have more fun puzzle solving in a more traditional puzzle hunt.

dkopi 11y ago
20 hours is quite a lot of time to devout. An escape room provides a 1 hour intensive experience. It's not only about solving puzzles, it's also about the adrenaline (Time limits do that), team building and cooperation, and functioning under stress. Just came back from a 5 day vacation in Prague. We went to 5 different escape rooms during that vacation. It comes out to about $10 a person for a group of 5. Money well spent for an intensive hour of fun.
- NotOscarWilde 11y ago
  To be more specific about the timing, it is 20 hours as in "starting Saturday afternoon and ending Sunday noon". I agree that it's tough on parents who cannot leave for a weekend here and there; the organizing teams are usually a mix of devoted fans and university students. There is a lot of stress involved in the puzzle hunts as well -- you have to solve the toughest puzzles at around 3am in the woods, some even in November. Struggling with fatigue (personally at around 8am) and not giving up is a big part of that, and if your team wants to be among the top 10, speed is a very big issue. The Czechs who like puzzle hunts (such as me) will likely prefer them over room escapes as they are all cheap, non-profit, community events with a good atmosphere, whereas the room escapes are more of a product that aims at the workforce (many room escapes talk about team building in their brochures) and the prices reflect that. The main downside for the foreign audience is that most Czech puzzle hunts I attended required fluency in Czech in a non-trivial way -- encoding messages in proverbs, conjugation, wordplay and so on. It's tricky; foreigners don't know about our puzzle hunts (it's a purely local custom), so they do not want to attend -- and the organizers feel that having them in Czech is enough.

ragebol 11y ago

Escape rooms are great fun! I did a couple, in Den Bosch and Nijmegen, Netherlands. Tip: don't go to a new one directly but only after a few months or so, so that the room can be tested and tuned in difficulty. Also, wear and tear can reveal some clues and correct solutions, so in those few months, everything gets tried and thus the overall wear and tear masks the correct solutions. It's expensive though, 20€/person for an hour or less if you're fast is relatively steep.

anuj_nm 11y ago

I've tried a bunch of these in Vancouver, Seattle and Mumbai. Most of them have been incredible. If you're the kind of person who enjoys the rush of solving puzzles under a timer, you would love this. Also, one set of rooms in Vancouver hired set designers to build the rooms (making them very realistic), and hired actors to help run the business. The actors really add to the immersive experience since they pretend to be part of the puzzle. But yeah, I don't understand how scalable the financial model is, since the owners would have to keep recycling the rooms every few months.

xyzzyz 11y ago
Recycling is really less necessary than it would seem. There are >50 escape rooms in Warsaw. If I visit one every two weeks, I'd start running out of options only after two years. Going to escape room twice a month is pretty often anyway...
- anuj_nm 11y ago
  I didn't realise that one city's market could be large enough to support that many. In Vancouver I've only seen 5-6 of them, and in Mumbai where this just started, I only know of one company running them. Yes, if you have >50, recycling won't be a problem.

regehr 11y ago

HintHunt in Paris is awesome.

MIKarlsen 11y ago
Tried London - was also a blast! Going to the local "Escape Factory" in Aarhus, Denmark in a few weeks with work. Fairly new location with a "Enigma" (WW2) themed room. Hope it can deliver!

spencertg1 11y ago

Cluequest is a great puzzle room in london. I wasn't that excited about doing it but once you're inside with some friends it gets super competitive and fun!! Really interesting business problem as well about how to maintain interest and grow customer lifetime value. Possibly a problem that could be solved by super fast iteration of rooms so that a customer is never going to need to do the same room twice.......? I guess it is much like any theme park. You need to continuously update and improve the attractions.

listic 11y ago

I've just been handed a flyer for escape room here in St.-Petersburg, Russia. Didn't know it's such a popular thing in the world right now.

sambe 11y ago

Really enjoy these but the quality varies immensely. In some they fail to setup the equipment properly or have weird clues and it ruins the whole thing. They are reasonably expensive (here 80-140EUR for an hour between 4-8 people). It's been a massive fad for a year or more in Europe, seems like they have to capitalise on as many TripAdvisor reviews as possible before it loses popularity.

justifier 11y ago

i had a friend invite me along to enjoy one of these rooms in nyc the puzzle layout was such that there were some 30-40 individual steps that needed to be taken that would culminate in a four digit combination you then use the four digit combination on a lock securing the lid of a box that contained a button that opened the exit the lock was a wheel lock where each wheel had 7 faces, 0 to 6 about halfway through the game the group had found the first 2 values of the combination i explained to my friend that math could get us out at 7 faces and four wheels your looking at: #!/usr/bin/env python3 import itertools len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=4))) #2401 but we were down to only two wheels left len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=2))) #49 all we had to do was try the 49 different possibilities for the lock, essentially brute forcing my friend was ecstatic and encouraged me to do it, but when i went over to the lock and started trying the different combinations a staffer came up to us and stopped us asking: 'do you really want to win that way?' my friend and i laughed at the indirect math shaming and returned to the group looking for clues eventually the timer ran out before the group could solve all of the riddles to find the last two digits of the combination edit: copypasta err

jgrahamc 11y ago
Wait, you used python, len, list, itertools to calculate 7 x 7? More seriously, calculating 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 reminded me of this old blog post on squaring two digit numbers in your head: http://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-your-head.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-yo...
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Seeing as there is a copied 4 in that calculation, they probably didn't use the code.
- justifier 11y ago
  hardly necessary, the code is just meant to explain the reasoning with manipulable variance but i offer it to you for future use under the GPL

fredmonroe 11y ago

Cool/clever escape room company in Denver... https://www.puzzah.com/ https://www.puzzah.com/ One of the founders, Derek, is an interesting guy and built an impressive tech stack that drives the rooms with a very high degree of automation. I think most HN'ers would enjoy speaking with him about it.

thehigherlife 11y ago
We did one of his puzzles while we were in Denver too and had a blast. He even took some time after to discuss some of the tech.

Aardwolf 11y ago

There are many flash games like this on the internet - but real life sounds way cooler :) I wonder now which came first, the computer games or the real life escape rooms... I saw another comment mentioning 4-digit codes. For some reason, every single such computer game I played also involved a 4-digit code, as if that's some kind of obligatory thing to have. So the 4-digit thing kind of lost its originality, I wonder why it keeps being present in such games?

olalonde 11y ago
SOS Labyrinthe in Montreal's Old Port which has a similar concept has been around since 1991. http://en.soslabyrinthe.com http://en.soslabyrinthe.com
fallinghawks 11y ago
I think the puzzle style in real-life rooms came from Japanese Flash games, starting with Crimson Room, but I may be biased since the real-life rooms I've played are run by Japanese/Asians. (Are you aardwolf on eg24?)

trentmb 11y ago

Man, I don't think I'm clever enough to enjoy these. How often do they resort to P&C adventure game logic?

valdiorn 11y ago

Is this not a huge thing yet in america? I've done like six or seven of these here in London. Most of them are good fun. There seem to be new ones starting up every month as well.

scheda 11y ago
Not yet, but they're getting to be. I've seen a few pop up for Halloween this year then there's a few touristy cities out there that permanently have them.

MikevHoenselaar 11y ago

Currently there are almost 250 escaperooms in the Netherlands. With 1.7 new escaperooms being added every month I can safely say it's going fast in the Netherlands. Lots of great ones as well! The scene is a lot further than in the rest of the world. US has +/- 500 rooms. NL 250 :). And I know 10 more rooms will open this year for sure. I played my first room in 2013 and started working on our escaperoom platform Escape Rooms Nederland beginning of this year. Biggest platform about escaperooms with reviews, news and comparison. Played around 40 rooms myself. Really love this phenomenon. Hopefully it will stick around. If you ever visit the Netherlands and want to know the best one in your area. Let me know. A new thing is growing popularity as well, Prison Island. You should check it out as well.

hellofunk 11y ago
I'm near the Netherlands, if you have advice on the good ones, let me know.
mati 11y ago
Can you elaborate on the Prison Island thing? What is that?
speleding 11y ago
I run an appointment scheduling site that is used by many escape rooms (supersaas) so I have a pretty good overview where they start: The Netherlands is indeed leading the pack but so far we are seeing many more in Europe than in the US, and almost none in Asia. Conversely, we see that the number of dog training classes in US is 5 times higher than in Europe :-)

guard-of-terra 11y ago

It does not have to be about escape. Why not find something in the room instead, hidden behind set of puzzles? Another popular thing is location games. You receive a book of puzzles in the form of "find X on a street Y near house Z" (some unusual features). You then need to solve travelling salesman problem while solving puzzles and recording answers. Some puzzle sets are bike-oriented, some assume you travel by public transport, some car-oriented.

boucher 11y ago

Here's the most popular company in SF that runs these: http://realescapegame.com/ http://realescapegame.com/ They are an offshoot of the Japanese division. All of their games are really well done. There are several other places in the bay area doing this now too, this one in Richmond is also great: http://letsescapesf.com/ http://letsescapesf.com/

arjie 11y ago
We did the Time Travel one at Real Escape and it was great fun. Very exciting. There's another at http://paniqentertainment.com/sanfrancisco http://paniqentertainment.com/sanfrancisco that was all right. Definitely liked the Real Escape one more. The operators all act as if they're part of the whole thing.
fallinghawks 11y ago
I played Escape From the Mysterious Room here a couple years ago. Great fun, great puzzles. If you're familiar with Japanese escape-the-room Flash games, the puzzles are very similar.

arbitrage314 11y ago

I just did the one in Nashville. It was a lot of fun, but it was very expensive (~$35), and they also made us solve the puzzle with a bunch of strangers (in order to fill up the room entirely). The good part of this is that they're making $280 per hour (8 x $35) off of their escape room, and at those prices, there should be many, many more of them soon (which will bring down the price to its equilibrium, which I assume is far lower).

hellbanner 11y ago
Right -- though that is $280 per hour that they're booked. I'm guessing these don't have repeat business very much, unfortunately (I think the concept is awesome!) This is one of my favorite online escape games: http://jayisgames.com/games/sagrarios-room/index.php http://jayisgames.com/games/sagrarios-room/index.php
- fallinghawks 11y ago
  This is a really good one, but I think Neutral is pretty much the champion. http://neutralxe.net/esc/index.html http://neutralxe.net/esc/index.html

evan_ 11y ago

There was a Science Channel show that aired over the summer called "Race to Escape" that followed two teams as they try to escape themed rooms using clues- it was a lot of fun to watch, though the omnipotent cameras led to a lot of yelling at the TV as you saw the obvious clue that the contestants kept overlooking.

panglott 11y ago

So this is like True Dungeon gone mainstream?

dougdonohoe 11y ago

There are 2 or 3 escape rooms in Cleveland and 2 in Pittsburgh. I've done one in each city - they were decent, but in both cases many of the clues were for 3-digit combo locks which were easy to brute-force after getting some of the clues. Working with strangers is also interesting (most have a 8 or 10 person quota per room). Anyhow, they are pretty fun. It's like Myst in real life.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Seems a bit like Laser Tag for the 21st century. In general I think the space of "real life + tech juice" sort of things is a pretty under-exploited market segment. From pacman on the streets of NYC to Ingress to Puzzle Rooms to Geocaching. It seems like a lot of different ways to take this.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
Every one I've gone to, the "tech" was incredibly minimal.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  To be fair the "tech" of laser tag is pretty minimal too :-) but its a fair point. Makes me wonder if there is a business in making props for these rooms with a bit more flash.
ohitsdom 11y ago
> In general I think the space of "real life + tech juice" sort of things is a pretty under-exploited market segment. Spot on, IMO. If you haven't heard of it, Topgolf[0] is taking on this role in the driving range world. [0] http://topgolf.com/us/play/games/ http://topgolf.com/us/play/games/

peeters 11y ago

I've done one of these, and what I found myself was that the challenge wasn't just solving the problem, but also promoting a social dynamic that allowed everyone to participate in the problem solving. That meant being intentionally ignorant to certain aspects of the puzzles to force participation from the quieter people in the group.

IvyMike 11y ago

My girlfriend and I have gone to a bunch of these in LA. They range from little strip mall places with a bunch of janky puzzles with poorly translated instructions to fully decorated and themed rooms with actors moving the action along. Check reviews on Yelp first. If you want to jump in, one of my favorites is "Trapped in a room with a zombie". They were featured on Big Bang Theory (don't hold this against them, and the room is nothing like portrayed in the show) and it's really well done--our zombie was hilarious. They have rooms in Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, LA, NY, Philly, and Seattle: http://roomescapeadventures.com/ http://roomescapeadventures.com/ In LA specifically, the Race/LA rooms are great: http://escaperoomla.com/ http://escaperoomla.com/ (Race/LA also puts on scavenger hunts which are also worth a shot.) (Not associated in any way with these rooms, just a huge fan of the concept.)

peeters 11y ago

So, my story about one of these. Had a great time; were on the verge of winning. All of the puzzles had resulted in us finding a cellphone. We find the 4-digit pin to unlock it. With a minute to go, we get into the phone and find there's one new voicemail on the phone. We hold 1 for voicemail, and hear: "This account is currently out of funds. To complete this call, please add credit to the account or place a collect call." So the buzzer runs out as we are trying to remember how to make a collect call (to voicemail no less). Afterwards we asked the staffer how we were supposed to fetch the voicemail, and she said "wait, there was a voicemail on the phone?" Turns out there was also an already-read text message on the phone that we were supposed to look at, but we were successfully red-herringed by some random person leaving a message at the wrong number.

pavel_lishin 11y ago
I feel like your staffer should have noticed what you were doing; every time I've done one of these, the staffers were usually fairly attentive, and would guide us away from the inadvertent red herrings like this.
- peeters 11y ago
  How was the setup for you? For us I think there were cameras in each room, and a radio we could use to ask the staffer clarifications about the game itself. But they weren't present in the room itself and I don't think they had audio. I agree you need a hands on approach to guiding. For example, in the same game we found a pencil but the lead was broken. So we asked "is the lead supposed to be broken; if not I have a pen in my pocket..." and they gave an emphatic "yes it's part of the challenge". So when other obstacles came up we of course assumed they were part of the challenge too.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    In every one I've done, there was a staffer present in the room; we were also allowed to ask them three questions per game, and in one variant, each question would dock us X minutes off the clock.

leesalminen 11y ago

I've taken my company twice to the Enigma rooms in Boulder. We made it out both times, had a blast and learned more about each other's strength and weaknesses. I think I had the most fun sitting back and watching everyone come together and solve a problem.

Yhippa 11y ago

Any recommended good ones in Washington DC?

thoth 11y ago
There are several choices. I've been to the DC Escape Room Live, but not the Alexandria, VA site: https://www.escaperoomlive.com/ https://www.escaperoomlive.com/ I've also been to the MD suburbs for Zombie Escape Room (this was in College Park, MD when we did it but it looks like it relocated): http://www.charmcityroomescapes.com/ http://www.charmcityroomescapes.com/ Of those two, my group enjoyed the Zombie escape a lot more. That's because the actress playing the zombie was excellent and she provided the extra challenge of avoid contact and slowly reaching more and more of the room. There is also Escape Artists DC, with 3 different setups: http://www.escapeartistdc.com/ http://www.escapeartistdc.com/ I haven't been to that one yet. Again in the MD suburbs, my friends and I are about to go to this one literally next weekend, Escape This Live: http://www.escapethislive.com/mainpage1/ http://www.escapethislive.com/mainpage1/ And there are two more I haven't checked out yet: Great Escape Room DC: http://thegreatescaperoom.com/washington-d-c/ http://thegreatescaperoom.com/washington-d-c/ Escape the Room DC: http://www.escapetheroomdc.com/index.html http://www.escapetheroomdc.com/index.html

edc117 11y ago

Definitely need to plan a trip to see one or two of these with a few friends. I'd love to see something like this done with the Occulus or some similar VR platform, though I doubt it'd have the thrill of the actual experience.

zarvox 11y ago

For folks looking for escape rooms all over the world: take a look at http://escaperoomdirectory.com/ http://escaperoomdirectory.com/

syaz1 11y ago

Went to a few of these in Malaysia. Really good for team building but the challenge itself is either too hard or too easy. There is no replay value either because the staffs are so eager to spoil the solutions and tricks after a game. Definitely give it a try though. Go to the bigger ones because they tend to have space for neat tricks like sliding door/book shelves etc.

fisk 11y ago

'"This is something that someone in their early 20s or late 20s or early 30s can go do with their friends," Ressel says.' I get that everyone still goes after the 'cool' demographic narrowly like sheep, but I hope he felt really foolish for saying that out loud. Of course, if his name is Kayden, he's likely very young and his dad has money and he may not have that sort of perspective/awareness at all yet.

shostack 11y ago
What point are you trying to make exactly? Targeting that demographic makes a ton of business sense. These are young people who like to go out and have fun with their friends and have disposable income. They are also typically tech savvy and are likely to spread the word through social channels, leave Yelp reviews, etc. That isn't "going after the 'cool' demographic narrowly like sheep." It's knowing which target audience to focus on to maximize the chance of success for your business. While you could make an educated assumption about his age based on how common that name is among certain demographics, the jab about "his dad has money" is just plain trolling, based on absolutely nothing in the article, and adds zero value to the conversation. From the article: "It's a social thing to do on a Friday night that isn't going to a bar and getting drunk. And everyone has to put their phones away and everyone has to interact with each other." We need more of this kind of thinking and less jealous whining like the parent poster.
- shard 11y ago
  Although Fisk was a bit overzealous I'm his attack on the statement, I do agree on his point about the ageism implicit in that statement. I don't see anything about escape rooms which makes people above early 30s unsuited as customers. If the person had said "This is something that white and Asian people can go do with their friends", or "This is something that men can go do with their friends", it would sound segregating and uninviting, and I submit that saying "This is soemthing that someone in their early 20s or late 20s or early 30s can go do with their friends" is just as segregating and uninviting.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

crazcarl 11y ago

I highly recommend visiting Mr X in Shanghai if you have the opportunity. It blew the two that I've done in the US out of the water.

MIKarlsen 11y ago

Holy moly. I had no idea this was such a hot topic. I tried "HintHunt" in London two years ago and loved it. Back in Aarhus, Denmark where I'm from, we just got our own version called "Escape Factory". I'm gonna try it with work in a few weeks. I would seem like something that could easily be turned into a good business given the popularity-level, and the ability to simply franchise the concept on a global scale with the same rooms and structures. Only "problem" would perhaps be that it's not something you do again and again, which would either mean rooms would have to be retired or that your business-model would have to rely heavily on activating new customers over and over.

anonu 11y ago

The article says "And everyone has to put their phones away and everyone has to interact with each other". I've done two escape the rooms in NYC (got out both times just in the nick of time btw). In both cases the cellphones were instrumental, whether it was for searching or reading QR codes for example. I don't think you should go into some of these rooms thinking you can't use your phone since in many cases you need it.... (short of searching for a walkthrough which is cheating IMHO)

wgh000 11y ago

In Milan, Italy, this summer also the Escape Room trend exploded and 12 companies opened with one or more rooms. We have been in http://www.effugio.it http://www.effugio.it and http://enigmaroom.it http://enigmaroom.it Really nice!