Last Monday we visited Escape Hunt in Brisbane, West End and experienced one of their escaping room adventure. Our team picked the jail room and spent 60 minutes finding our way out from the jail. It was a very interesting experience as the jail room was inspired from a real heritage prison in Brisbane called Boggo Road Gaol (which is no longer operate), and real stories as well. It’s really clever how they managed to set the puzzles and clues and make them fit in the time limit given to us from the start. I’m so exited as the Escape Hunt team invited us to test their upcoming Boggo Road game!
Escape rooms are team based games with real life action known as Augmented Reality Games (ARG), which typically include locking 5 to 6 players in a room for an hour, challenging them to discover clues, solve mysteries and puzzles, and to accomplish tasks in order to escape the room in which they have been confined. The games require attention to detail, and depend on teamwork where players must effectively communicate and cooperate.
Escape Rooms are an increasingly popular and worldwide phenomenon with various versions set in different cities. Escape Hunt mimics this concept, with this particular game being Brisbane based and themed and including stories based on local heritage.
The Escape Hunt premises feature three main rooms, each themed on a colourful tale from real life local history. ‘Murder in the Barbershop’, ‘Escape from Boggo Road Gaol’, and ‘Bomb at Government House’, as well as general rooms. (Escape Hunt, 2015).
Owners and room designers, Paul and Giovanna Shakhovskoy, are the Game Masters. As hosts, they meet the players and briefly introduce the story of the room and the rules of the game. A countdown timer begins when players enter the main room and the door is locked behind them.
The game is intense as players explore the room looking for clues, presented as puzzles to solve. The puzzles become increasingly complex as the clock counts down. The Game Masters have the room under surveillance and can remotely communicate with players should they become desperate enough to ask for hints.
Escape Hunt could be considered as an ARG for two reasons (Polson 2015). It blends the reality of being in a real Brisbane location by using fictional scenarios based on themes belonging to an era before computer technology existed, and it requires the players to adopt hybrid identities as they play a fictional or historic character or sometimes themselves or imagined past selves.
Escape Hunt is a great way to spend an hour being a detective and solving mysteries as well as being a powerful and challenging thinking exercise requiring imagination. According to Young (2015), the term “escape room” is usually misunderstood, especially by people who have never heard about the games before, who may perceive them as scary and not family friendly, or as something you become trapped inside. This terminology probably will change as some companies are using the name Escape Games instead. Early in 2015 Universal Studios, Florida opened temporary escape games Dig Escape the Room as a movie promotion (Young, 2015) signifying an expansion into the area of intellectual properties.
Main Stakeholders of the work undertaken
- Game designers
- Interior designers
- Writers
- Film directors
- Graphic designers
- Interactive and visual designers - Technicians
- Test Players
Escape Hunt is a great example of an Escape room game designed to challenge and provide enjoyment to both tourists and locals, providing information and celebrating the city’s heritage.
There are great opportunities to use Escape Hunt as a landmark, a hub where tourists can discover Brisbane and be entertained. As an educational tool it can provide an exciting context in which students can be challenged with science or mathematical puzzles based on Escape Hunt’s historical themes.
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