Probably nowadays most people know or have heard the term ‘Escape Room’. Generally speaking, it is a puzzle game with detective elements transferred to the real world. Players are locked in a mysterious room from which they have to get out by solving puzzles. Searching for ciphers, combining pieces and solving logic tasks is an addictive game that requires cleverness and quick deduction.
Not only are the players thrown into a vortex of mysterious events and puzzles, but they also have a limited time to solve them and leave the room. Participants usually have from 45 to 90 minutes to escape. Escape Room is a type of interactive group game, which usually involves from 2 to 6 people.
A brief history of Escape Rooms
Nowadays Escape Rooms are associated with real rooms, where a group of people is locked in. Their task is to solve puzzles and get out of them. However, the beginnings of Escape Rooms were completely different.
Originally, the game was available only in the virtual version. Computer games, the so-called Escape Rooms, were extremely popular. The mechanisms of solving puzzles were taken from adventure video games. Usually, players are first forced to find some hidden objects, which are clues to the next actions needed to get out of the room. Sometimes players have to find the solution to a cipher or guess a code that unlocks a locker or the next door. However, it all depends on the style, and even on the home market, the thematic range is huge. The player could follow the course of events with excitement.
Then the “point and click” type games were created, which gave players the possibility to take part in events.
As the Virtual Escape Rooms were becoming more and more popular, creating a real puzzle room was only a matter of time. One Japanese man, Takao Kato, noticed a huge potential in virtual Escape Rooms. In 2007 he came up with an idea to bring computer games into real life. And so the first live Escape Room was created.
There is also a thesis that the first one was probably created in Silicon Valley in 2006 when a group of friends decided to turn their fascination with adventure games and RPG into a real business and opened the first puzzle room. The idea caught on and from the United States and only later made its way to Asia.
Some even look for its genesis in the shows of 19th-century magicians like Harry Houdini. It can definitely be emphasized that they refer to and have their origin in more or less interconnected phenomena.