The venue is none other than the popular escape house or escape room. The pace of their spread is due to the growth of their popularity. But why do we love being locked in – ideally with our companions or perhaps strangers – left to ourselves, with only us determining whether we can find the one existing way out?
The Beginnings
According to some assumptions, computer adventure games inspired the creation of escape rooms. After the spread of personal computers, rudimentary adventure games quickly emerged for them. Creating these games was relatively easy. They consisted of simple comic-like graphic elements and a series of interactively changing text-based events.
Based on these, the first escape game called “Mystery House” was created in the early 1980s. After that, computer-based escape adventure games began to develop explosively. They became available on new consoles in the 1990s, leading to their unstoppable spread.
The first real-life escape rooms opened in 2006 in the United States and Japan. The California-based escape house was themed around Agatha Christie’s popular novels, while the Japanese competitor sought to make computer games a reality. The difference between the real and computer versions is that in a real-life escape room, there is no violence or weapons, instead the solution is based on logic.
Appearance in Hungary
In Hungary, the first venue opened in the heart of Budapest in 2011. Initially, it was mainly visited by foreign tourists between two city sightseeing tours.
Psychological Approach
Escape games fundamentally rely on teamwork almost without exception. The great advantage of this is that the knowledge and experience of team members add up, making the path to the solution easier. Often a participant feels like an outsider during the game because they cannot contribute anything while their teammates quickly solve everything. However, a significant twist always occurs, which becomes their moment, and they become active in a certain part of the game while others step back. This gives extra confidence to each participant and makes the game extremely enjoyable.
Flow Experience
The team gains momentum, the participants become increasingly activated, and the pace accelerates. The outside world is completely shut out, and after a while, the process sucks in every player. It is called the flow experience, a captivating series of events that sharpens focus and blurs the circumstances for the participants.
To enhance the experience, escape rooms create sets according to specific themes. These make the game even more realistic and the experience more unique.
What Can We Expect in the Future?
We are curious about the future developments of escape room games worldwide. As observed, digitization is already present in every aspect of our lives. The entertainment industry and the world of games are no exception. The future undoubtedly involves the spread of virtual reality (VR) in escape rooms. Today developers of virtual reality game software have already embarked on creating adventure games where we have to perform various tasks. We need to acquire objects, and keys, and use tools and weapons to reach the final goal. However, the development does not stop there, as increasingly complex and sophisticated hardware is being manufactured for these games. Therefore, the future will be a mixture and evolution of these games. Imagination knows no bounds.
