Escape room

Real-life escape the room is a first-person reality adventure game simulating online room-escape flash games, like Crimson Room and QP-Shot, created by TAKAGISM Inc. by Toshimitsu Takagi in 2005. In the game, the player is locked inside a room and must explore his or her surroundings in order to escape. Similar to War Game and Haunted House, the game requires players to be observant and use their critical thinking skills in order to solve the challenges and riddles.

Real-life room escape is becoming popular in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, and Mainland China. The concept of the game has also been imported to Hong Kong recently with the integration of Hong Kong characteristics.

History

File:Real life escape(Japan).jpg

Room escape at Ajito of Scrap in Tokyo.

United States

The earliest real-life room escape, Original piece was created in Silicon Valley by a group of system programmers in 2006. The mysteries and challenges were inspired by the works of Agatha Christie, a famous British crime fiction writer whose play,The Mouse Trap is the longest running play in history. They made a series of scenes into reality and it became one of the Silicon Valley attractions. Only 23 people escaped from the room successfully.

Japan

Real Escape Game (REG) in Japan was developed by 35-year-old Takao Kato, of the Kyoto publishing company, SCRAP Co. in 2008. It is based in Kyoto, Japan and produces a free magazine with the same name. Over 200,000 participants have played the Real Escape Game in Japan, China, Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States since SCRAP was established.

Singapore

Singapore is participating, in the Real Escape Game since late 2011. They produced the first installment known as “Volume 1" Escape from the Mysterious Cathedral.”

China Mainland

Date	Incident
2008-10	Real Escape Games arose in civilian houses in Harbin.
2011-09	Real Escape Games started in Shanghai and Hangzhou under the cooperation of Japanese and Shanghai leisure activity companies(BadNews and MaoLivehouse).
2012-01	BBG-Club held Real Escape Games Shanghai and Hangzhou during Lunar New Year.
2012-02	A real escape center, 51taotuo, opened in Beijing.
2012-07	The first Chamber of escape with advanced technology applied opened in Nanjing.
2012-08	Guangzhou's first reality Chamber of escape opened.
2012-09	Beijing "LOST studio" opened.
2012-11	Real Escape business settled in Chengdu.
2012-12	Shenyang’s first launch of reality chamber by the company, “ESCAPE”

Taiwan

Real Escape in Taiwan was started in 2012 under the cooperation of the original REG Company, SCRAP and a Taiwanese-based touring company, Comma，Comma. With five themes and the integration of reality and fantasy, the Real Escape phenomenon spread in Taiwan, including Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung.

Spain

Real Escape in Spain was started in 2013. ROOMIN offers escape the room games, introducing in a new story to become the protagonist of the action.

Development in Hong Kong

As early as in 2006, real-life escape games emerged in Hong Kong among secondary school students, taking form of group-activities organized during joint school camps. One of the earliest organizations organizing real-life room escape games non-commercially was Union for Young Leaders. In 2008, a student camp jointly organized by St. Mary Canossian College, La Salle College and Wah Yan College, Kowloon, with more than 60 participants also featured a large-scale real-life room escape game session.

Today, the number of commercial real-life escape game providers has been increasing. Some of the earliest are: HKESCAPE, LostHK, The Escape, Mr. Escape and Freeing HK.

Date	Event
2012-11-13	Opening of Freeing HK. 逃出香港(店舖)開幕 http://www.freeinghk.com/ Wiki - Freeing HK
2013-02-16	Soft opening of The Escape
2013-02-20	Opening of Mr. Escape
2013-03-07	It is officially announced that Mr. Escape, another simulated room escape game company, joined Freeing HK as its subsidiary.
2013-03-09	Opening of HKESCAPE
2013-04-1	Opening of Lost HK

Cultural Significance

Hong Kong is a city with cultural diversity under the influence of both Eastern and Western cultures.

On gaming culture, Hong Kong has been strongly influenced by the Japanese game industry, including companies such as SONY and NINTENDO. Although there are all kinds of "real-life room escape games" all over the world, those in Hong Kong have added local elements such as the Cantonese language, the design of settings for prisons and architectures of Hong Kong in the 1960s, and the mysteries set on the MTR system map.

Hong Kong is a small place with dense population and citizens usually feel exhausted from the hustle and bustle of the metropolitan city life. Journalists perceived this genre of game as a new form of entertainment offering an opportunity to take a short break in this over-crowded city.