About Escape Rooms
What is an Escape Room?
Hopefully by now you’ve heard about room escapes and what they are, but if not, below is an overview of what they are and how they came about.
A room escape, or live-action puzzle room, is a room (or rooms) that is essentially one big puzzle. Instead of playing a video game at your computer or on a television, you’re playing a game in real-life, using your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands and most importantly your brain.
The concept behind most escape rooms is that you have one hour to solve all the puzzles and challenges you discover within the room in an attempt to find your way out of the locked room. This can include finding hidden items, solving riddles, opening locks or completing just about any sort of task that can be viewed as a puzzle. In most cases, you aren’t actually locked inside the room, and sometimes the goal of the room isn’t to escape, it’s to defuse a bomb, or figure out a mystery. These are the cases in which I call them “puzzle rooms,” although the term “escape room” is still widely used for all scenarios. To succeed, escape rooms require teamwork and communication, which is why businesses have started to adopt escape rooms as a popular team building exercise.
Every escape room you do will be different in some way. Each room will have its own theme and narrative to go along with the story line. You may see some common themes, such as a Laboratory or Bank Heist, but even those similar rooms should have different puzzles and objectives, allowing them to be completely different experiences.
Troubled Puzzles has nine fun and challenging escape rooms sure to test your wit. Come see if you can escape!
The History of Escape Rooms
While the concept of an escape room has been around for quite some time, it started to gain popularity in 2004 with the online flash game Crimson Room. From there, more and more online games started appearing with a similar concept. In 2007, SCRAP opened up in Kyoto, Japan, claiming to be the first real-life “escape room.” From there, the phenomenon spread west through Europe, with Budapest being considered the current hub of room escapes. In 2013, the industry expanded into the U.S. beginning the trend you see today. Over the next 7 years, more and more room escape facilities opened up each year until the pandemic hit in 2020. Many escape room businesses struggled during those years, some of which closed their doors for good. Now, in 2026, it seems like the escape room industry has leveled off, and the remaining businesses have solidified themselves as high-quality escape rooms.
Dana Meskan, from Medium, wrote a more in depth article on the full history of escape room and the 60-minute time limit.
