People have been enjoying online games for years, but now the popular “escape” games have come into the real world.
Elisa and Todd Matas are co-owners of the Clue Room, which opened last month. A venue in Centennial, it allows people to play a room escape game live.
In these games, real people are locked into rooms with other players, and the group has to work together to solve puzzles, locate clues, and use everything they can find inside the room to escape from it. There is a time limit, usually an hour, within which participants have to escape, and they have to use critical thinking and observation to finish the game successfully. These real-life game rooms are an outgrowth of video games like ‘QP-Shot’ and ‘Crimson Room’.
These real-life games began in Europe, in Hungary and Switzerland, then spread to Canada and now the United States, and are also becoming popular in Taiwan, Japan, and mainland China. Rooms sometimes have themes, requiring participants to escape from villages full of werewolves, space stations, or prisons.
The new enterprise is on Arapahoe Road, and visitors can choose between two scenarios, each with an original story. The Matas say they will change the games every six months.
The Matas could work with a flyer printing company to create handouts, including a coupon, to draw visitors to the new venue.
