It's the latest trend for thrill seekers: Escape Rooms are popping up across the US and the world. You have forty-five minutes to solve a puzzle with other players, working together to get out of a room alive. CCTV's Patrice Howard shows us how this experience-driven game is growing in popularity, getting to people put down their cell phones.
The door is locked. The lights are dim. There's a mysterious man lurking and time is running out for this group of 20 - something's to solve a puzzle and escape before an evil Alchemist returns to his lair.
It sounds like a teen horror flick, but this is Adrianna Hoang's birthday bash and I got an invite. In lieu of gifts, she has asked her friends to pay around 30 dollars each to get locked in this Escape Room, the latest live entertainment trend that has friends and co-workers collaborating to crack a caper before it's too late.
Everything you need to solve the puzzle is right in this room - which means no technology allowed.
"Here is an experience where you are together, you need to work together, you are in a strange environment and you have to figure things out and it's all about communicating and having a shared experience which I think people are really starving for because of all the technology that we use," John Hennessy, owner of Escape Room L.A., said.
Escape rooms take video games to the next level - inserting real people into the action. They gained an audience first in Asia, but can now be found in major cities worldwide. It's why theme parks are now putting top dollar into building immersive lands instead of high-tech rides: some experts say escaping reality is in demand.
"I think that the proliferation of escape rooms all around the world is a sign that this is an important business, one that is growing rapidly and seems to be sustainable," Richard Lemarchand, co-chair of USC interactive Media & Games Division, said.
Game experts like Richard Lemarchand predict Escape Rooms may come full circle, integrating technology back into an art form powered first by humans.
"I think we are going to see new kinds of escape rooms that might use apps on our phones, to give us even richer interactions with the puzzles in the space and with our teammates and that allow the games designers to tell a complex evolving story," Lemarchand said.
Escape games are also becoming an unconventional training tool - with corporate companies taking employees out of the boardroom to bond.
"We are not curing cancer of anything like that, but I think it's just as important for people go to out and have a really fun time a really memorable experience. I think this is something that people will walk away from and talk about long after they have actually done it and I think it's very valuable in that sense," Hennessy said.
Back in the alchemist's lab - time ran out. We didn't solve the puzzle. But working together, we did escape reality for a little while, which was perhaps the prize all along.
