History of Escape Rooms

Do you enjoy trying to solve puzzles and riddles? If so, then you’re in luck! Escape rooms have been around for centuries, and they continue to be a popular form of entertainment. What makes escape rooms the perfect afternoon activity is that they are designed to be a test of both your mind and your body. You need to use your mental skills to solve puzzles and unlock clues, while also using your physical skills to navigate the live escape room and find hidden objects.
So, whether you’re looking for a fun night out with friends or a unique way to bond with co-workers and have a team-building activity, escape rooms are the perfect experience. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the history of escape rooms. We’ll also explore some of the different types of escape rooms that are available today. So if you’re curious about how escape rooms came to be, or if you want to learn about some new types of escape rooms, then keep reading!
Where Did Escape Rooms Originate?
Escape rooms are real-life puzzle adventures where players are “locked” in a room and must work together to find clues and escape before their time is up. So where on earth did the idea come from? Escape rooms have a captivating story encompassing everything from early Greek mythology to video games and corn mazes. Typically, modern day escape rooms look a bit like “escape the room” or “point and click” computer games, but that’s only the beginning. Human beings are normally inquisitive. We like to investigate, observe, and deduce. Our forebearers were no different. Read on to find out the many dynamics throughout history that have led to what we know as the modern day escape room.

Ancient Greek Mythology
The ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth (completely physical maze) is a well known tale. The Athenian hero, Theseus, was tasked with finding his way through a huge labyrinth to find and kill the evil Minoteur before escaping the maze and returning home. Like fables, myths are used to tell us something about human nature, and this one shows how people take on seemingly implausible tasks with shrewdness and courage.
The image of the labyrinth even appeared on Greek coins as early as 430 BC and the labyrinth pattern can be found today on everything from gothic cathedrals to modern beer labels. The labyrinth isn’t totally a Greek invention, however. Physical relics and references to labyrinths have also been found in the histories of Turkey, Egypt, Italy, Russia, England, and Native Americans.
Customarily, a labyrinth was meant to trap evil spirits. They were also thought to be used by pilgrims who walked the serpentine paths while reciting prayers. When you get right down to it, since very early times, we’ve been concocting complex ways to get lost and taxing ourselves to escape.

Hedges and Turfs
Labyrinths, like mazes, were brought out of the storybook and into the real world in the 16th century when hedge or turf mazes became popular in the royal gardens of Europe, particularly in England. The mazes were made of carefully manicured bushes arranged to provide an entertaining game for royals and guests. In some places, hedge mazes are still maintained and open for visitors to enjoy as they stroll through lush gardens.
Hedge mazes are part of popular culture and appear in everything from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter to The Shining. In the U.S., hay bale mazes appear during the Halloween season as part of the annual festivities with many taking on spooky themes and haunted houses to match the holiday. Labyrinths and mazes eventually moved online in the form of early video games. Pac Man is probably the most well known of these.

An Obsession with Secrets
Historically, humanity has always had an obsession with the ideas of secrecy, codes, and mystery. From clever Jewish cryptic messages hidden in texts thousands of years old to Alan Turing’s code breaking military secrets during WWII, cryptography has long played a part in unmasking hidden truths.
Often featuring the classic, random-substitution, letter-to-symbol ciphers, codes can include letters, numbers, and punctuation marks, and are with or without word divisions. This form of puzzle has been the framework for many mysteries throughout the ages. You can see cryptography at work notably in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold Bug,” and Maurice Leblanc’s The Hollow Needle.

Video Games
The interactive element of escape rooms that ask participants to solve to advance (instead of simply making the right turns) can be traced back to video games. Behind Closed Doors (1988) and Myst (1993) are two examples of games that trap players in a room and test their problem solving skills before allowing their escape, in the same way as a three dimensional escape room. However, video games that don’t take place in locked rooms have always had an element of the “escape room experience.” Many adventure games feature puzzles that must be solved before players can move on to the next level or scavenger hunts for necessary items, tasks that are echoed in today’s escape rooms through cracking codes, solving riddles, and finding hidden objects.
But the one that tipped the scales is arguably the cult classic video game Crimson Room. Created by Toshimitsu Takage in 2004, you have to work your way through a series of clues hidden in a crimson colored room. The only way to escape is to use your logic and work your way through 23 steps. It can still be found online and started a puzzle movement in Japan known as Takagism after its creator.

Modern Beginnings in Japan
Not long after Crimson Room changed the video gaming world forever, innovative designer Takao Kato brought the first-ever live action escape room to life in Kyoto, Japan, in 2007. With a desire to create his own adventure, “ a story and invite people to be part of it,” Kato ignited a new craze.
He translated a game he saw classmates playing online into the real world, and brought his concept to clubs and bars through his company, SCRAP Entertainment, Inc. Tickets for live events sold out quickly. These events proved a popular concept and the company now has locations across the globe.
After SCRAP’s success, escape rooms spread across Japan and then to Singapore and Europe. The first live escape room in Europe was Para Park, which opened in 2011 in Budapest, Hungary. Although the owner said he wasn’t inspired by the Japanese rooms, they certainly shared a very similar concept. The rooms took off in Budapest, quickly becoming extremely popular. It’s no surprise that the city (home to the creator of the Rubik’s Cube) fell in love with the puzzle rooms and Budapest has since become the world capital of escape games.

The Phenomenon Arrives in America
The first American owned escape room appeared in August 2013 with Seattle-based Puzzle Break, a company co-founded by Microsoft alum Nate Martin. This was quickly followed by Escape the Room in New York City, in October 2013. By the time 2014 rolled around, there were 22 modern escape rooms in the United States.
Make Sure To read Our Guide To Escape Room Tricks & Tips Here
Whenever you find yourself craving a little excitement and adventure, an escape room experience might be just what you need. So why not give it a try? You might just find that you enjoy it more than you ever thought possible.