The concept: Escape rooms have existed for a decade or more, but the craze took off in the U.S. in 2015. Teams of six to 12 people are put in a locked room that typically looks like a set from a movie and given a fictional adventure story that includes clues to a sequence of puzzles. The challenge is to solve all of them within an hour in order to escape from the room and halt an evil scientist’s dastardly intentions to blow up the world, elude flesh-eating zombies or stop some other diabolical plan.
Why it works: “It’s interactive and you have to work with others to solve things,” says Ajmal Saleem, founder of Suprex Private Tutoring, a Houston-based company that has used escape rooms as a team outing for its tutors, who work as independent contractors. “You feel like you’re in a video game. It’s educational and entertaining at the same time.” Google “escape rooms” in your city and you’re bound to find something.
photo courtesy fox in a box
