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Want out? Room-escapes are like real-life video games

On a Thursday evening in June, Molly Clark bounded into the lobby of an unremarkable office building on Walnut Street, past a bored-looking receptionist, and downstairs into the basement - the unlikely setting for a trendy form of entertainment called a room-escape game.

Gamers search for clues to get out in a session at Escape the Room Philly. (TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer)
Gamers search for clues to get out in a session at Escape the Room Philly. (TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer)Read more

On a Thursday evening in June, Molly Clark bounded into the lobby of an unremarkable office building on Walnut Street, past a bored-looking receptionist, and downstairs into the basement - the unlikely setting for a trendy form of entertainment called a room-escape game.

Clark, 18, of Wayne, had seen something similar on reality television a few weeks earlier: The current Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe, and her date, a man known to viewers only as "Ben Z.," had to solve puzzles to find the key that would release them from a locked room, under threat of snakes, poisonous gas, and other terrors.

"It was this crazy thing, so I started googling it," Clark said. She decided Escape the Room Philly would be the perfect way to celebrate her high school graduation, and brought three friends to get locked in with her.

Thanks to social media, and that Bachelorette stunt, such room-escapes have become a nationwide phenomenon. At least two national companies are running games in the city, while a local entrepreneur is aiming to open a third version this month in South Philadelphia.

Mike Fortino, general manager of Escape the Room Philly, explained that he runs three games for $28 a person at any given time in the basement of 1528 Walnut: two "Office" games in ordinary-looking conference rooms, and "The Cavern," an elaborate production that opened in May.

As Clark and other guests arrived for the 6:30 p.m. Cavern game, Dexter Anderson, a local actor in between regional theater roles, introduced himself as their "Clue Master." He'd be observing through closed-circuit video cameras and using microphones, meting out hints to help them along.

The teens were joined by Sandra Forman of Brookhaven, who had played the Office game a few months earlier with her godson and invited a couple of friends to give this one a shot.

Last time, she said, "we were close, but we didn't get out."

This time, she added, "I want to finish. My friends are very competitive, so we're going to win."

Anderson explained the rules: "You have 60 minutes to figure out how to escape the room. Everything in the room is part of the game. But the ceiling is just the ceiling. Don't try to climb up it. Don't try to tunnel through the floor. I only bring this up because it has happened many times before."

He further entreated the group not to use force to open doors, tear down curtains, or shred loose wires.

"I don't know what it is," he said. "Sometimes, people get in there, and they go nuts."

After he locked the friends and strangers into the Cavern, a dark, vaguely chapellike space with a confessional, a pew, and lots of electric candles, it was easy to see why.

Players milled around, upending furniture, using phone lights to explore dark corners, and feeling for hidden compartments.

"I feel useless!" Charlotte Alexander, a friend of Clark's, muttered.

It may not look like much, but all this fumbling in dark rooms is adding up to big business.

Victor Blake, who founded the chain in February 2014 in New York, said he now has games in six cities. He grew up playing online video games like Crimson Room, in which users point and click to find a way out of a locked room.

"I thought a real-life version of that would be fun," he said. "Everybody wants to be Indiana Jones. Everyone wants a moment where they're the main character in the movie, and they're driving the story forward: You find an amulet, put it on the staff, and the sun comes through and points the way. This is a way to do that in an hour."

Blake began hosting pop-up games in borrowed office space on weekends, and it grew from there.

Now, in Philadelphia alone, Fortino runs more than 50 games a week for groups of 10, and expects to add a fourth room soon.

"It's all word of mouth, people sharing their winner or loser photos on Facebook," he said. "I think people like it because it's something everyone can do: friends, families, bachelor and bachelorette parties, birthday parties, team building."

Across town at Sherman Mills in East Falls, another chain, Room Escape Adventures, is running a show called, "Trapped in a Room with a Zombie."

The show has been running since March last year, according to Rob Pellechio, associate producer and part-time zombie. (The brain-eating villains are chained up, but on a leash that relaxes a foot every five minutes. "We did have to add a rule about not hurting the zombie," he said. "People really get caught up in the illusion.")

He runs about 11 shows per week, also for $28 a person.

Almost inevitably, people leave feeling closer to one another, he said. "The common goal of 'Let's get out of the room before we become zombie food' really bonds people."

Down on East Passyunk Avenue, Elisabeth Garson is in the final stages of turning a 1,500-square-foot former Rite Aid into what she hopes will be the start of her own nationwide room-escape empire.

Garson, who works in advertising, came across the concept a few years ago at Comic Con. "I started going to every one I possibly could," she said.

Her game, "Escape the 1980s," is filled with VHS tapes, touch-tone phones, and other retro features.

She's targeting Gen-Xers for a reason: "At a certain point in adulthood, you have some money, and it gets really boring to go out drinking."

The same impulse is driving other live-action games for adults.

Greg Loring-Albright, of Plain Sight Game Co., has been running a spy game in Rittenhouse Square and is developing a heist game for the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The appeal, he thinks, is the same as what's driving the room-escapes: "A lot of fun and play is constrained to screens. People want to use the real world for play, too."

Back in the gloom of the Cavern, the group had unlocked a series of secret passageways. But only about 20 percent of groups escape, and, with six minutes to go, it wasn't looking good.

Then, someone found a key and raced to the door. It opened into the brightly lighted hallway. They had won.

Anderson, the clue master, strolled in and explained to the players just how the game worked.

He started just inside the door: "We do have a light switch right here. You're allowed to use it," he told them. "No one ever uses it."

Plain Sight Games, www.groupon.com/deals/gl-plain-sight-game-co; Trapped in a Room with a Zombie, www.Roomescapeadventures.com/Philadelphia.

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