Update July 2017: The company HintQuest is no longer in operation. Consider checking out Exit the Room
What Is a Live Exit Game?
Four people. One mission: escape a room in 60 minutes.
A live exit game is a game in which using logic and hidden clues, you must escape from a locked room before your time is up.
Being locked in a room and having to escape within a given time period might lead you to think of the SAW movie series, however, there is one significant difference: the game is non-life threatening. It can be compared to online room escape games or the smartphone game 100 doors.
Arriving at HintQuest
Upon arrival to HintQuest, my teammates and I were given a one page sheet with a basic explanation of what the game would entail and a few of the basic rules that we had to follow, such as only ask to be let out of the room in an emergency and not to use extreme force to obtain any of the clues.
We then listened to a brief audio recording about what we would be spending the next sixty minutes doing in the locked room and got one final introduction to the game by staff member Xavi before beginning the challenge.
The Great Escape
Without giving a major spoiler to the room (no pictures or video were recorded), I will proceed to tell you how we planned to escape.
Using creativity, our imaginations, and logic, my teammates and I searched for any clues around the room we were placed in that would help us to escape. We split up and pulled things apart in the room desperately searching for clues and trying to piece together what the different clues meant.
Initially, the clues that we found did not seem to make any sense, but after a little while, we were able to piece things together. It was a little bit challenging to figure out how the clues we found were going to lead to our escape.
Every ten minutes, an alarm went off signaling that our time was winding down, and every ten minutes we became more eager to find more clues that could help us to access other clues.
As the last twenty minutes rolled around and the clues became less and less frequent, we asked for help. The television screen in our room gave us vague clues on where items might be found or what we had to do with the items already in our possession.
We were getting close to piecing all of the clues together but the time was winding down.
The time ended and the door unlocked. We had not successfully completed the challenge of finding all of the clues that would help us to escape, but we had a good time in the process.
Even though we were not actual ‘winners’, we were proud of ourselves for taking on the toughest level of all of the challenges offered, persevering through it, and coming close to completing it. We had a lot of fun working together as a team and we cheered each other on during our individual successes. Overall, we had a good time doing something a little different and unique during our vacation to Munich.
Have you ever participated in a live exit game? Would you?
HintQuest provided my team with a complimentary game, however, as always all opinions are my own
This is so cool! I have never heard of such a thing before. I am looking them up right now and want to find one! I feel like images of Saw would be flashing through my brain the whole time, though!
You should definitely find one to participate in, it is a lot of fun. I too thought it would be like SAW going into it, but lucky it wasn’t!
Any idea the success ratio on the ‘hardest’ level?
That is a very good question Chris, I am not sure but I could find out for you! 😀
Oh, you crazy kids these days… I’ve never even HEARD of live exit games!
You should try it Francesca!