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The clock counts down as players try to find clues scattered behind paintings, pieces of clothing and boxes in the Basement Escape Room.
How Much Do Escape Rooms Cost
With black hoods on their heads, five people, locked in chains, listen to an ominous monologue.
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“Hello, my wonderful friends,” a voice purrs. “I’ve lived here for five years and spent much of that time collecting delicate pieces like you to aid me in my little experiments.”
Edward Tandy, the murderous cannibal who has imprisoned this group in his basement, lays out the rules of his game: they have 45 minutes to solve the puzzles inside and escape. Once the time is up, the gas will be pumped in, putting the prisoners to sleep.
It sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, but these five daredevils paid $30 each to be locked in an escape room, a fast-growing game where players in elaborately decorated prisons must find clues to break free before time runs out. Corporations have opened escape rooms for team building and communication exercises.
Escape games, which first became popular in Japan, are based on video or online games such as Zelda, Myst, and Crimson Room.
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In Los Angeles, dozens have popped up as entrepreneurs scramble to decorate empty warehouses and offices. Some places, hovering around $30 an hour of embarrassment, are like confusing movie sets mixed with mind games and tricks from TV shows like The Mole and Survivor.
The lights come on, and the players—three women and two men—quickly find the first key hidden inside the thermostat. They fly out of the cage and run into a dark room reminiscent of nightmares.
A toaster resting on a bookcase holds a bloody, severed hand. Gruesome drawings of dead animals hang over a desiccated body in a bed. Scribbled in red, is that blood? — words: “I never knew much about people until I took one apart to see how it worked.”
“There is a growing consumer demand for social gaming experiences that are alive and unique and cannot be replicated,” said Sam Roberts, assistant director of interactive media and gaming at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. “You can charge premium prices for it.”
Escape Room Prices
Roberts predicts immersive entertainment will be the next frontier in gaming — “the future of gaming,” as he puts it.
There is a growing consumer demand for live and unique social games that cannot be replicated. You can charge premium prices for it.
“Virtual reality is a literal gold rush,” he said. As for escape rooms, “there is a growing belief that doing such things is financially beneficial.”
Kayden Ressel, co-owner of Basement Escape Room, a cannibal-themed version of Sylmar, said some people see it as the latest “get-rich-quick scheme.”
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“It’s a brand new industry and no one really knows what it is,” he said. “They all sense an opportunity.”
As the clock counts down, five players try to find clues scattered behind the paintings, in pieces of clothing and in boxes.
“These are our children!” says Karen Beck, snapping a black-and-white photo of her smiling family with X’s on their faces. “They’ve got our pictures! Holy crap!”
John Hennessy, owner of Escape Room L.A., has been pulling people away from screens for over a decade when he founded Race/LA to host races and scavenger hunts.
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Two years ago, he and a friend invested $30,000 to transform a space atop a downtown building into a detective’s office straight out of a 1940s film noir. A room called “Detective” was followed last year by “Theatre” (haunted by ghosts), “The Cave” (exploring a lost civilization) and “The Alchemist” (finding the philosopher’s stone).
Hennessy, who has a background in theater, said many clients are looking for an unconventional diversion where collaboration is key. Each room has a costumed actor to keep time, give instructions, and nudge players who need a hint.
“People really want an experience that doesn’t involve staring at a computer screen or monitor,” Hennessey said. About 800 players go through the rooms every week, with an average of 96 games.
Jeff Hsin, a former IBM engineer, programs most of the complex puzzles for Exit Game in Monterey Park with a small team of friends and collaborators. Pressure-sensing floors and motion-activated lasers, a la Mission Impossible, add to the atmosphere.
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In the last room called “AI”, the robot gives hints. Hsin said he brought in video game designers to make the experience more immersive.
The group finds a dog door that leads into a tunnel. Karen Beck’s husband, Jeremy, crawls in first; he wails as a gust of wind blows, followed by the fierce barking of invisible watchdogs.
The tunnel ends in a darkened bathroom. Inside, a young woman chained to the floor screams. Her face is covered in bloody cuts. She is dressed in dirty hospital scrubs and her curly mane has not been combed in what may be years.
The small room is crowded as everyone is crowded inside. Frantic hands scour the walls and open pipes for the key.
What Is The Price Of Escape Room Game?
Jeremy Beck finds him taped under the sink, but in the chaos he escapes without unlocking the captive.
He realizes his mistake and runs back to free the woman. She escapes from her prison like a crab.
Ressel devoted about a quarter of the 6,000-square-foot warehouse to a VIP area where corporate customers enjoy soft red sofas, big-screen TVs and iPads.
Along with meals, the corporate package includes actors, some of whom have MBAs. In the quest room, they serve as crazed prisoners. Afterwards, they critique the group dynamics in the style of a consultant.
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“They provide an analysis of the team’s strengths and weaknesses and how to apply that to the business world,” Ressel said.
Sales representatives from Caldera Medical, an Agoura Hills medical device company, had a “great” team-building exercise there, said Cassandra Pollert, an executive assistant who organized the walk.
“All of our reps are extremely competitive and Type A personalities,” she said. “As a networking experience, it was great. We talked about it the other day.”
And the criticism — “not yelling at each other and listening to each other” — was spot on, Pollert said.
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Back in the original room, Jeremy Beck and Bob Yoravey, Karen Beck’s brother, open the wardrobe and move the clothes away. He has a fake back and they end up in another room. This one is apparently for kidnapped children, filled with stuffed animals and pencil drawings on the walls.
With 15 minutes to go, the alarm goes off and the room fills with unearthly screams and barking. The clang calls out to the prisoner, who bangs on the chain-link fence and shouts “faster!”
The group finds a Bible and a verse from the Book of Job that contains the password to their kidnapper’s account. This unlocks his computer which gives the final code. The door to freedom opens.
Theme: Freedom requires cracking a detective case, freeing a ghost, exploring a lost civilization, or performing alchemy.
Looking Glass Adventures
Theme: Find a cure for the virus that is ravaging the planet before the slow moving walls of the lab crush you.
Shan Li covered retail and restaurants for the Los Angeles Times. She previously reported on the California economy and the technology sector. A native of Texas, she graduated from business school at New York University, where she found journalism to be much more interesting than working on Wall Street. She left The Times in 2017. You and 10 other people are locked in a room. Words, numbers and pictures are scratched on the walls, objects are scattered. A disembodied voice informs that there are 60 minutes left to escape. A frenzy ensues as people search the room for clues that lead to the key that will open the door that just closed behind you. You do not realize how the voice is heard: 10 minutes have passed…
Part game, part theater, part team exercise, escape rooms are gaining popularity around the world. And the growth was explosive. The number of permanent rooms worldwide has increased from zero in early 2010 to at least 2,800 today, according to estimates based on rooms registered in quest directories.
Nate Martin, co-founder and CEO of Puzzle Break, the first escape room to open in the Pacific Northwest, invested $7,000 of his own money in 2013 to launch the business. He recouped his initial investment within a month. Since then, the business has been profitable every month and reached over $600,000 in 2015 with a cautious approach. “Some months are record-breaking,” he says. “Some are just very good.”
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In Dallas, Andrew McGennett-Smith and his wife Tracy run Escape Expert, which opened in February 2015. “We started with a negative profit and now we’re bringing in $70,000 a month,” he says.
The
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