Escape Rooms

What are Real-Life Escape Rooms

A real-life game is set in a physical space, where you use teamwork to find clues, solve puzzles, and to escape the room with a limited time. The games have unique themes, engaging storylines, and single or multiple rooms that you have to go through in order to escape.

The History of Real-Life Escape Rooms

More than its recognition for success and innovation, escape rooms have been recognized for being excellent for all occasions, like friends’ outings, birthday celebrations, bachelor & bachelorette parties or corporate team building events. But its history is still a mystery.

There is speculation regarding where escape rooms originated from, whether in Japan, Hungary or the UK. The common belief is that it all started from the digital experience of a text adventure game in 1988 (in the UK) with the premise of being locked in one location. In 2004, a more visualised experience in the form of a flash-based video game was released in Japan, called “Crimson Room”. Then in 2007, in Japan, the “real-life” version was created by a guy named Takao Kato, of the Kyoto publishing company, SCRAP. Surprisingly his inspiration came from a girl who was hooked on online escape games and how she was drawn to it.

Meanwhile, Attila Gyurkovics, opened the first European escape room chain (Parapark) in Budapest, Hungary, in 2011. Mr Gyurkovics however, claims that he was unaware of Japan’s escape rooms. Instead, his inspiration came from his experience as a personality trainer, as he saw the effect escape games can have on team dynamics.

In 2012, it started spreading worldwide, starting with North America and Australia. As of 2015, There are over 2,800 escape rooms recorded across the globe.