It isn’t strange to hear stories of people who sacrifice food and sleep for days on end to finish a video game. Neither is it unusual to pass by an Internet café on a sunny afternoon and see it filled with students, their eyes glued to the virtual worlds unfolding on the screens before them.

As if computer-generated zombies, serial killers and machine guns weren’t addicting enough, Breakout Philippines and Mystery Manila have arrived to kick the gaming experience up a notch. These live action escape room games have begun to put players in the middle of the scene—literally.

Both promise to give thrill-seeking players an adrenaline rush unlike any other. By tearing us away from our consoles and forcing us to solve mysteries with our own bare hands, they are making our spare time a lot more interesting.

Architecture of the game

Originally from Japan, the world’s first live action game, Real Escape Game, was invented by SCRAP in 2007 and quickly spread to countries like Greece, Singapore and the United States. The concept usually remains the same the world over—the participants are locked in a room and together, they must find clues, solve puzzles and escape the room in a given amount of time.

For Jerie Casipit, a literature (English) junior who tried Breakout Philippines’ Prison Room, where players take on the role of framed inmates, the experience was all too realistic. “Before the game, you’re offered orange jumpsuits too so that you can feel in character,” she shares. She and her friends were also blindfolded before entering to the room, heightening the suspense of the situation.

Crafting live action adventures seems to be the specialty of Runtertainment Inc., the group behind both Breakout Philippines and the popular zombie run series Outbreak Manila. Linking Outbreak Manila to Adarna’s Lair, one of Breakout Philippines’ escape rooms, was a stroke of genius on their part as it easily captured people’s interests: In the room, players must find the information needed to stop the zombie virus before it wreaks havoc in Manila.

Breakout Philippines claims to be the first real life escape room game in the country, but so does its competitor, Mystery Manila. Apart from the amount of playing time given and the maximum number of players, not much separates the two. Both offer players several themed rooms, abide by similar game mechanics, and try to add a distinctly Filipino twist to the names of various characters and settings.

“The games we come up with are a balanced mix of local and international culture,” observes Mystery Manila Co-creator Marge Chang. “We didn’t want to isolate foreign customers and at the same time, we wanted aspects of the mysteries to be relatable to the local market.”

Mystery Manila has also experimented with redefining the escape room. “We’ve recently launched another first, an outdoor game called the Ticking Time Bomb,” she adds. “Players are not trapped in a room but play the role of a bomb squad exploring the vicinity of Mystery Manila, like a scavenger hunt to look for clues to diffuse a fictional bomb and save the city.”

Pieces of the puzzle

Television series like Sherlock and board games like Cluedo inspired Chang and her collaborators as they spent countless days bouncing ideas off each other. “Instead of creating puzzles that are near-impossible to solve, we’ve carefully crafted and tested our mysteries to offer a good balance of challenging yet solvable puzzles,” Chang explains.

Cracking codes, unraveling riddles and picking locks are just some of the tasks players can expect once they step into the room. For instance, Casipit remembers deciphering strange writings on the wall, leafing through scribbles on old notebooks and piecing together torn bits of a photograph.

“Without giving too much away, we had to solve different puzzles in order to find the keys that would let us out,” she recalls. “There are quite a number of locks though, so it was a matter of finding the right combination, the right key, to open the locks.”

Casipit adds that while it’s good to come prepared with a strategy, staying focused on the task at hand is much easier said than done. “Having six people in such a small space messes with your concentration,” she shares. “One of our teammates [was] more than six feet tall, so it was hard to move around.”

For Hazel Tolentino, another literature (English) junior who has also tried Breakout Philippines, these challenges are impossible to overcome without cooperation. “[My friends and I] tried, in a very Scooby Doo fashion, splitting up and searching for clues. When one of us found something interesting, we’d all try to help and piece it together.”

Once inside, they soon realized how difficult it was to put any sort of order into the mess of information in the short span of time. Pitted against the clock, they felt the pressure to succeed become increasingly palpable.

“It’s hard not to get caught up in it when they do such a good job of making you feel like you’re really trapped in there,” she notes. Although she says it was overall a fun experience, the stress that mounted as the timer on the wall ticked to a close left them all screaming at one another in panic.

Reality bites

With Breakout Philippines and Mystery Manila priced at around P400 to P600, depending on the size of the team, a question arises: Is their appeal strong enough to counter the cost? This is something that Walfrido Diy, a part-time lecturer at the Computer Science Department and a game design specialist, sees as highly unlikely in the long run. “Once you’ve solved them, that’s it,” he says.

Quick game replay is something that the video game has over the live action game format. If the player fails to solve the case, he or she only has to hit the replay button to have another go at the mystery. He can do this over and over again until he is successful. On the other hand, the live action game format not only requires constant gameplay innovation on the part of the creators but also a repeated investment from the players.

However, Diy notes that the experience of playing in a live action escape room simply cannot be replicated by a video game. Pushing buttons and entering cheat codes will no longer cut it; players in live action escape room games must physically stumble upon things entirely on their own.

According to Chang, this is largely where the appeal of the concept lies: The rule is that there are no rules. “It removes the confinement of a computer or a fixed storyline. Players are given much more freedom and power to decide the outcome of each game, unlike in computer games wherein the outcome is pretty much defined from the beginning.”

There is a lot of potential for experimentation in the future, something that Breakout Philippines and Mystery Manila will be taking full advantage of. Both camps promise new ways of delivering the experience in the future; while neither has divulged its exact plans just yet, Chang says that new mysteries are in the works for the opening of Mystery Manila’s Makati branch this August.

Week in and week out, the rooms are filled with people trying to crack the case—it is nearly impossible to get a booking at the last minute. Longevity aside, live action escape room games are injecting a much-needed dose of excitement to our weekends. After all, why go to the mall when you can play detective instead?