Escape game

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Escape Games or Escape the Room Games belong to the genre of adventure games . They are mostly browser games , which are typically controlled by " point-and-click ". In addition, there are numerous commercial implementations of the game principle as a group game worldwide, in which people have to solve tasks or puzzles in a real room in a given time in order to master the game.

Gameplay

The main features of the game principle come from the adventure genre. However, the online game Crimson Room by the Japanese Toshimitsu Takagi from 2004 is generally accepted as the forefather of this game concept . The aim of the game is to leave a place where you are trapped.

Most games are played in the first person view and require patience , perseverance , skill and logical thinking from the player . It usually begins with a short intro , which uses a text or a short scene to provide a framework for action. The place is usually a room that has at least one locked door and holds some items and hidden solution tips. Some games also include several such rooms. The player must first aim at the objects in the room with the computer mouse (= Point) and then click (= Click) in order to interact with these objects. This includes, for example, linking items and objects to get new objects and clues. Often the hints have to be interpreted correctly or puzzles have to be solved in order to get the necessary codes or passwords.

The puzzle takes place on different levels of perception. Typically, visual stimuli are provided in the form of letters, numbers, colors, characters, pictograms and pictures. Language, tone sequences and music are used as acoustic stimuli. As a rule, individual elements do not stand on their own. Notes and objects usually do not provide any useful information at the start of the game. Their meaning arises from similarities with other elements.

Live escape games

All live escape room game providers in Germany that opened by the end of September 2015 are listed chronologically on a timeline according to the time they opened.
Live Escape Room at a provider in Berlin.

In addition to computer games, implementations as real group games, mainly referred to as live escape games or escape rooms , were also created. The first Live Escape Games originated in Japan in 2007. In the Live Escape Game, small groups of people are locked together in a room or a small number of rooms and have to leave their prison within a specified time (usually 60 minutes) with the help of the clues and objects hidden therein. There are also providers where the groups are not locked up, but have to solve a main task with the help of many puzzles that build on each other within the given time. They are observed via cameras by a person supervising the event, who intervenes in the room via a radio or with images on a monitor if something wrong is done or the group does not make progress. The players can usually also become active themselves and request information from the game master if they get stuck. The rooms are advertised as entertainment and as team building events.

Germany

In Germany, Live Escape Games began as an artistic experiment by the performance group machina eX, which made its debut at the 100 Grad Festival in 2011 with its interactive play 15,000 Gray and then appeared at various theater festivals. HintQuest began as the first commercial provider in Munich to establish escape-the-room games in August 2013. At the beginning of February 2017 there were 208 German providers in 90 cities with 426 individual scope. In May 2017, the first German escape room based on virtual reality technology was opened in Berlin . The players act here with head-mounted displays in empty rooms.

Austria

There are also numerous live escape games in Austria. The country’s largest escape room, at 170 square meters, has been Going Underground by Crime Runners in Vienna since March 2019.

Poland

Poland's around 1,100 escape rooms came into the focus of international publicity in early January 2019 after five 15-year-old girls were killed in a fire in an escape room venue in the Polish city of Koszalin . Extensive controls carried out afterwards revealed that the fire protection regulations had not been met in the majority of all escape rooms. It also became known that Poland's escape rooms are not subject to any special requirements.

Switzerland

Influenced by adventure games and school experiments opened in March 2012 in Bern , the Adventure Rooms , the first Swiss travels. Originally, their operator, the physics teacher Gabriel Palacios, designed these games for his students. Most of the time, it was about using scientific phenomena to make invisible codes visible. Positive customer evaluations and word of mouth allowed the number of visitors to grow significantly. Palacios also licensed his idea to operators abroad. At the beginning of 2018 there were locations in twenty countries.

There are now escape rooms in many cities in Switzerland.

Czech Republic

After the fatal accident in Poland, the fire brigade announced that they would randomly check escape rooms in Prague by March 2019 for compliance with the regulations on fire protection and escape routes. The controls showed that two thirds of the companies did not comply with fire protection regulations and that half could not produce a valid license.

Hungary

In Budapest, the Parapark company has been offering a real escape-the-room game in one of the many ruined cellars since 2011 . The idea was copied several times, so that by September 2015 there were already over 34 providers in the Hungarian capital. Parapark expanded to Austria, Spain and Germany, among others, and other Hungarian companies also formed international branches or licensed their concept to foreign companies. Parapark was based on the flow theory of the Hungarian professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi . In contrast to the Japanese predecessors, here mainly hidden keys had to be found or seemingly inaccessible keys had to be reached with the help of objects in the room.

Board games

The principle of Escape Games was also implemented in the form of board games. From the end of 2016 the Kosmos-Verlag published under the title Exit - Das Spiel Escape-Game-Abenteuer by Inka and Markus Brand . Other similar games are of the publisher norisbank Games published game Escape Room - The game of Andrea Hofbeck , the escape-the-room games of Nicholas Cravotta and Rebecca Bleausowie the early 2017 in the publishing Space Cowboys released Unlock . The series Escape Dysturbia was published by Homunculus Verlag from October 2018 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ It's not easy to Escape the Book Club Killer. Toronto Star, November 28, 2014, accessed December 14, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Test in Cologne: What is the hype about “Live Escape Games” about? Kölnische Rundschau, October 19, 2015, accessed on November 9, 2015 .
  3. ↑ 15,000 Gray: play by machina eX in Düsseldorf. Spiegel Online, November 7, 2012, accessed October 14, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Team development: Just get out of here. Zeit online, February 6, 2014, accessed November 9, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Information on Escape Games. Retrieved December 2, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Exit VR breaks the boundaries of an escape room. In: Escape Maniac. June 4, 2017. Retrieved June 21, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Melanie Gerges: Don't panic. Wiener Zeitung, July 28, 2015, accessed on November 9, 2015 .
  8. ↑ As in the film: Who defuses the bomb underground? Die Presse, March 15, 2019, accessed on June 24, 2019 .
  9. ^ Death of five girls - "Escape Room" owner arrested after fire. SPIEGEL ONLINE, January 6, 2019, accessed on January 7, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Free yourself who can combine. Berner Zeitung, August 20, 2013, accessed on December 14, 2014 .
  11. ↑ "Adventure Rooms": Chains to success. Swiss radio and television, October 9, 2014, accessed on December 11, 2014 .
  12. ↑ All Escape Games and popular Escape Rooms in Switzerland on the worldofescapes.ch website. Masters of Entertainments, accessed June 24, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Fire brigade checks Czech "Escape Rooms" radio.cz, January 9, 2019, accessed June 24, 2019.
  14. ↑ Radio.cz: Fire Brigade: Most Prague 'Escape Rooms' Fall Short On Safety, Lack Permits. Retrieved August 21, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Basement breakout: Budapest's escape games go global. CNN travel, May 22, 2014, accessed November 9, 2015 .
  16. ^ Escaping, Literally, in Budapest and Beyond. The New York Times, July 2, 2014, accessed December 14, 2014 .