Getting out of a locked room in just one hour is a new form of entertainment gaining popularity in Kyiv.
The rules of the game called Escape Room Quest are simple. A team of two to four people has to get out of a locked room by solving various riddles to find the key to open the door.
Anastasiya Belokurova, a quest geek who visited most of the escape rooms in Kyiv, believes such puzzles force people to think outside the box and helps them get to know others better.
“It’s very interesting to observe the reactions of friends who face challenges and are pressured to solve the puzzles within time limits,” she says.
Escape quests first appeared in Budapest a few years ago. Over time, the game spread throughout the world and reached Ukraine this May.
“The process of problem solving becomes an intellectual addiction. People get obsessed with it once they try a quest game,” says Vitaliy Bezkrovny, a co-founder of Vzaperti (Locked Up), a Kyiv company that creates such quest games.
To participate in the challenge, a team pays some Hr 350-500 for a one-hour game.
To make riddles more interesting an escape room is usually stylized in some historical period or professional interior. It could be an average living room with standard furniture and lots of domestic items. Or it might look like a gloomy bunker or a chemical laboratory.
Thirty-three-year-old economist Oleksandr Melnykov and his friends managed to escape from a room whose interior had the theme of an artist’s studio. Melnykov is still impressed with the chamber’s realistic atmosphere.
“We left our everyday routine at the threshold and completely dived into the atmosphere of an artist’s workplace,” he says. “The interior looked very realistic. All this mess like an easel near the bed and a carelessly left paintbrush hinted that an artist may return home at any moment.”
Developers of escape quests design the interiors themselves. After renting an appropriate accommodation in downtown Kyiv, organizers choose a room concept and start decorating.
“Usually we buy necessary furniture and stuff at flea markets or online. Many items are provided by our friends,” says Bezkrovny of Vzaperti.
Along with the artist’s studio, his firm has now three other escape rooms – Police Station, Cinema and Laboratory. Bezkrovny and his friends collect ideas both from their clients’ feedback and from their own experience as quest gamers. He plans to open a Pharaoh Tomb and an Apocalypse room in a couple of weeks.
So far, Bezkrovny’s intuition has not failed him or the business that he created from staging quest games. The number of quest participants has doubled since May, when he set up the first room.
“Laboratory, one of our escape rooms, is so popular now that one has to reserve a game at least a week in advance,” the quest founder says.
The Police Station is the most difficult one. More than half of the participants fail to find the key to get out.
Bezkrovny says that mixed teams of men and women, people with humanities and science backgrounds generally better solve puzzles compared to homogenous teams.
Solving riddles does not require any specific knowledge. Bezkrovny recalls that just recently a group of teenage quest newbies managed to escape from one of the rooms in just 19 minutes – the venue’s record.
“A versatile way of thinking is the key to get out of the locked room,” Bezkrovny says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected].
Escape-room quests in Kyiv:
Escape Quest
escapequest.com.ua
Hr 350 per team till 6 p.m., Hr 500 after 6 p.m. and on weekends
Qimnata
qimnata.com
Hr 400 per team till 5 p.m., Hr 500 after 5 p.m. and on weekends
Exit Game
exitgame.com.ua
Hr 400 per team on weekdays, Hr 500 on weekends
Vzaperti
vzaperti.com.ua
Hr 400 per team till 6 p.m., Hr 500 after 6 p.m. and on weekends
