East Lansing might be one of the next cities to be swept up by an escape game craze, as East Lansing City Council approved a special use permit for the construction of the game room in the basement of 301 M.A.C. Avenue at its Jan. 5 meeting.
In an unanimous 5-0 vote, Matthew Ao, a software engineer, was given permission by the council to move forward with the new game room, considered an “‘escape room’ where participants work to solve puzzles as a group in order to win the game,” according to the City Council memo.
Games of “Escape the Room” have been sweeping the nation as of late, with rooms in high-profile locations such as New York, Boston, Scottsdale, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Escapetheroom.com boasts these locations with plans to expand to Detroit, Chicago and Indianapolis, among others. Many other local businessmen and companies have opened up escape rooms of their own with locations in Ann Arbor, Warren and Davison.
“In 2007 Japan came up with the first one, and only a couple years ago they started coming to the states,” Ao said during the meeting. “There are around 200 in the states now and there are four in Michigan in the last year and over the last two months, actually, two more came up — one more in Grand Rapids and one more in Okemos.”
These escape rooms are a game of problem solving and added flavor of mystery. Groups of people ranging in sizes of 6-14 are placed and “locked” in a room of their choice. The groups must work together from then on to solve puzzles that will ultimately unlock the door. If the groups can not do so in an hour the game is up and the group loses.
“At no time will they actually be locked in the room, but there will be a secret door out and they will have to either find the secret door or find out how to unlock it,” Ao said of the groups and their objective.
The escape rooms are usually a collection of rooms with each individual room having its own theme and corresponding scenario. Groups will have to choose one room before they start and will have an hour to complete the clues - which are made by Ao - therein to ultimately unlock the room.
“To start we’re just going to open up three rooms, all independent of each other,” Ao said. “The three themes will be an office, a closet and a bomb shelter.”
Some current locations include a photo opportunity for the losers and winners with signs proclaiming the group’s victory or defeat. For example a group who fails to unlock the secret door in a zombie themed room will hold up signs claiming "zombie food" or "zombies rule." Winners have held up signs bragging about how quickly they unlocked the door.
“There are many options that could be come up with but, for example, you could find a diary where you see some random person cataloging an adventure they had and maybe there’s a computer somewhere else with a password," Ao said. "Find the password somewhere, you look in there for pictures, just stuff like that.”
The door the groups enter through will never be locked and employees will monitor the rooms via camera for “the creepy factor and to make sure the players are safe,” Ao said. It’s an added touch that will ultimately help put some strain and pressure on the players.
This raised slight concern from council member Erik Altmann about safety issues, but Planning and Zoning Administrator Darcy Schmitt said the police weren’t worried with the monitoring of the rooms and there wasn’t a fire safety issue as long as the door the groups enter through remained unlocked.
Ao expects the student population in East Lansing will be receptive to the game and is hoping to draw not just students, but families and businesses as well.
“They’re fun for basically anybody and they’re really good team building exercises as well for companies,” Ao said. “I think it could market well for students and a wide range of people.
“It’s really popular in China right now, too, which is actually why I felt (the escape room idea) was super safe here, because at the very least all the Chinese students know of these as well.”
Ao said he hopes to have a 70 percent success rate for the groups and each escape room will have a varying difficulty level. The games are scheduled by hour time slot and are by appointment only online with the entry fee costing $20 per person.
No concrete time slot was set by Ao at the meeting for construction of the rooms in the basement of 301 M.A.C. but said he wanted to get going on the project right away.
