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:<p>"This account is currently out of funds. To complete this call, please add credit to the account or place a collect call."<p>So the buzzer runs out as we are trying to remember how to make a collect call (to voicemail no less).<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>A new thing is growing popularity as well, Prison Island.
You should check it out as well.
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.<p>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: <a href="http://roomescapeadventures.com/" rel="nofollow">http://roomescapeadventures.com/</a><p>In LA specifically, the Race/LA rooms are great: <a href="http://escaperoomla.com/" rel="nofollow">http://escaperoomla.com/</a> (Race/LA also puts on scavenger hunts which are also worth a shot.)<p>(Not associated in any way with these rooms, just a huge fan of the concept.)
i had a friend invite me along to enjoy one of these rooms in nyc<p>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<p>you then use the four digit combination on a lock securing the lid of a box that contained a button that opened the exit<p>the lock was a wheel lock where each wheel had 7 faces, 0 to 6<p>about halfway through the game the group had found the first 2 values of the combination<p>i explained to my friend that math could get us out<p>at 7 faces and four wheels your looking at:<p><pre><code> #!/usr/bin/env python3
import itertools
len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=4))) #2401
</code></pre>
but we were down to only two wheels left<p><pre><code> len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=2))) #49
</code></pre>
all we had to do was try the 49 different possibilities for the lock, essentially brute forcing<p>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:<p><pre><code> 'do you really want to win that way?'
</code></pre>
my friend and i laughed at the indirect math shaming and returned to the group looking for clues<p>eventually the timer ran out before the group could solve all of the riddles to find the last two digits of the combination<p>edit: copypasta err
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.
Cool/clever escape room company in Denver...
<a href="https://www.puzzah.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.puzzah.com/</a><p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.
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.
Here's the most popular company in SF that runs these:
<a href="http://realescapegame.com/" rel="nofollow">http://realescapegame.com/</a><p>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: <a href="http://letsescapesf.com/" rel="nofollow">http://letsescapesf.com/</a>
It does not have to be about escape. Why not find something in the room instead, hidden behind set of puzzles?<p>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.
There are many flash games like this on the internet - but real life sounds way cooler :)<p>I wonder now which came first, the computer games or the real life escape rooms...<p>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?
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.
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).<p>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.
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.<p>The fast-paced group problem solving is quite enjoyable, although I still think it's not worth the 20 € / person they usually ask.
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.<p>That meant being intentionally ignorant to certain aspects of the puzzles to force participation from the quieter people in the group.
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.<p>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.
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.<p>I think I had the most fun sitting back and watching everyone come together and solve a problem.
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.
For folks looking for escape rooms all over the world: take a look at <a href="http://escaperoomdirectory.com/" rel="nofollow">http://escaperoomdirectory.com/</a>
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)
Escape rooms are great fun! I did a couple, in Den Bosch and Nijmegen, Netherlands.<p>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.<p>It's expensive though, 20€/person for an hour or less if you're fast is relatively steep.
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).<p>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).
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.<p>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.
In Milan, Italy, this summer also the Escape Room trend exploded and 12 companies opened with one or more rooms.
We have been in <a href="http://www.effugio.it" rel="nofollow">http://www.effugio.it</a> and <a href="http://enigmaroom.it" rel="nofollow">http://enigmaroom.it</a>
Really nice!
Definitely need to plan a trip to see one or two of these with a few friends.<p>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.
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.
I've just been handed a flyer for escape room here in St.-Petersburg, Russia. Didn't know it's such a popular <i>thing</i> in the world right now.
'"This is something that someone in their early 20s or late 20s or early 30s can go do with their friends," Ressel says.'<p>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.