Escape rooms and quests in reality - a new kind of game for geeks

Now, probably, one of the signs of a new phenomenon is the absence of normal articles in Wikipedia. If you look at the articles "Escape-room" and Escape room , then it is clearly seen that this direction has great potential for popularization. I bring to your attention a short story about this genre and some impressions (without spoilers) from visiting the Ufa quest Howard's Trap .

Story

Building gameplay around the task of "getting out of a locked room" was embodied in various ways. One of the first, probably, was the text adventure Behind The Closed Doors 1988. With the spread of Flash technology, it became possible to simply create a small game, which led to the fact that in 2001 the game MOTAS appeared (it is still alive, you can play by following the link), and in 2004 the game that became That sense is the canonical representative of the genre - Crimson Room (you can play it, but you can’t get through - you need the code from the developer’s site, which doesn’t work anymore). If anyone is interested - there is a site with a large selection of games of this type .

A few years later, a branch of the genre appeared - the task "to get out of the real room." The first game of this type is called the Original Piece of 2006, which was invented in Silicon Valley. In 2007-2008, the Japanese Takao Kato invented the Real Escape Game , which was widely sold in Asia - Japan, China, Taiwan, and Singapore. But in recent years, games have begun to spread actively throughout Russia. About the technical aspects of the implementation of the games were written on Habré , there is a review publication , but, unfortunately, it was buried in the “I am PR” hub and is not even searched on the site.
It seems that Asia retains leadership in the prevalence of this genre - they even filmed a reality show . And if you understand English well, you can see the funny psychological classification of players that you have already managed to do:
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Idea

The concept of escape-room is based on the following ideas:

• A team of players, usually 2-4 people;
• For a limited period of time, usually 60 minutes;
• Tries to get out of a locked room;
• Solving puzzles, solving ciphers and getting quest items.

The room in which the action takes place, is framed in accordance with the plot and creates an atmosphere of immersion in the quest.

Advantages:

1. High atmospheric.
2. The work of the head is combined with the movement of arms and legs (climb on / under the table, feel the walls, floor and ceiling).
3. Team work can be used for team building.

Disadvantages:

1. Zero replaisability. Re-pass the same room does not make sense.
2. A time limit means a significant probability of loss. It can upset someone.

Personal experience

On the New Year's weekend, my wife and I decided to go to the quest "Howard's Trap . " In the story, Howard Volovitz missed the key to the airlock in open space. Duplicating equipment is in his laboratory on Earth, and players play the role of friends of an unlucky astronaut, frantically searching for a key, which can unlock the gateway and save Howard.


Probably, the sky map was the last straw for the decision “I want to try!”


Being a more stubborn geek than the creators of the game, I spent a couple of minutes thinking: “Why does the two-body attraction formula illustrate a rocket's flight? Where is the law of conservation of momentum or the formula of Tsiolkovsky? ”


The screen below is built for megapopular publishing . What is curious, it works noticeably worse than the publication promises


Personally, I liked the lack of locks in the classic sense - solid servos, contacts and sensors that respond to different radiation ranges.

We didn’t save Howard (he probably should have used the Russian Pirs module instead of the American Quest, according to the experience of Gravity with no one getting into the ISS through him), but we discovered a new interesting game genre and got quite suitable amount of pleasant emotions.

Conclusion

It was a great surprise for me to learn that there are already more than a dozen escape rooms in Ufa. It is logical to assume that there are about the same number in other million cities, and in the MSK there are over a hundred of them.
A simple search on the Internet confirms this - there are many atmospheric photos:


I suggest in the comments to share their experiences, necessarily with the indication of the city, so that your fellow countrymen could learn about interesting quests.

UPD. On Twitter, they suggested a resource for finding rooms in cities , maybe it would be useful for someone.
UPD2: Another resource for finding and rating rooms by city.