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Copyright © 2020 by Daniel Huiet
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a recording, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles, critical reviews, and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Book cover and interior design and typesetting by Lisa Von De Linde of LisaVdesigns
ISBN: 978-1-7352742-3-2
ebook ISBN: 978-1-7352742-2-5
audiobook ISBN: 978-1-7352742-0-1
First Edition, 2020
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
What is an Escape Room?
Chapter Two
How the Mind Works When There is Pressure in a Situation
Chapter Three
Self-fulfilling Prophecy; Think Your Way to Success or to Failure
Chapter Four
A Group’s Thought Process Before It Goes into a Room Often Determines Its Success
Chapter Five
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
Chapter Six
They Just Won’t Listen
Chapter Seven
We Just Don’t Listen
Chapter Eight
Learn, Evolve, and Adapt
Chapter Nine
The First Date
Chapter Ten
Does Age Make a Difference?
Chapter Eleven
Let Go of Your Pride
Chapter Twelve
Drunk, High, and Hopeless
Chapter Thirteen
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
Chapter Fourteen
Getting Involved in the Game
Chapter Fifteen
Oh, No He Didn’t
Chapter Sixteen
High-Schoolers: You Never Know What You’re Going to Get
Chapter Seventeen
We’ve Been Robbed
Chapter Eighteen
The Outbreak is Haunted
Chapter Nineteen
Don’t Actually Take the Treasure
Chapter Twenty
The Superstar in the Room is Right in Front of You, or Perhaps He or She is Behind You
Chapter Twenty-One
How Women Play Escape Rooms
Chapter Twenty-Two
How Men Play Escape Rooms
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Person Who Knows Everything
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Different Types of Players
Chapter Twenty-Five
Making Things Harder Than They Are
Chapter Twenty-Six
How Words Can Impact Morale
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fortune Favors the Bold
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Beware of the Red Herring
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Trust Me, I’m an Engineer
Chapter Thirty
Three Generations of Fun
Chapter Thirty-One
Why We Do What We Do
Chapter Thirty-Two
In Conclusion
Afterword
Why I Decided to Write This Book
Introduction
You can hear the police sirens screaming from outside the building, as the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. You are so focused on your task at hand, you don’t even feel or notice the sweat beads slowly rolling down your face. Every team member in the group of accomplices plays a specific role in this mission, and team members are currently scattered around the room working diligently. Your job is to open the safe and get the loot. The vault is now directly in front of you. The moment you’ve been preparing for is finally here. All that needs to be done is to insert the four combinations of numbers to crack and open the safe, and a lifetime of ease, bliss, and vacation is yours. Behind you an accomplice shouts out the combinations and instructions to the safe. “Turn the dial counterclockwise four times landing on 72, now clockwise three times stopping on 84, counterclockwise again two times reaching 53, now for the final spin, turn the dial clockwise stopping on 87.” You follow the instructions to a tee, knowing you are almost in the safe, moments away from victory, moments away from riches. Boom! A loud noise echoes down the hallway! A smashing of the front doors’ downstairs and a rush of footsteps can be heard racing towards your location. The law enforcement has entered the building. They’ll be at your position in less than a minute. You don’t have much time but not much is needed. A simple turn of the lever will open the safe, changing your life forever. The time has come to finish the job. With your right hand you turn the lever towards the left, but nothing happens. Trying not to panic, you attempt the lever again. Nothing. Frantically you grab the safe combination from your fellow accomplice. Counter-clockwise 72, clockwise 84, counter-clockwise 53, counter-clockwise 87. At that point, the door busts open and the SWAT team bursts into the room, guns drawn. “Hands up, don’t move!” they yell. Your arms are now handcuffed behind your back as a law enforcement agent escorts you to their van. You and your team are going to jail for a long time.
What happened? Prior to the heist, the team spends weeks going over the details. The who, what, where, when, why, and how were all covered in great length. Each team member knew his or her roles and what was expected of him or her. In the hustle of the moment one simple mistake was made: an error that would forever alter all of the team members’ lives. The last turn of the dial was supposed to be counterclockwise not clockwise. This small miscommunication resulted in the team of bank robbers, including you, being thrown in prison for a long time. Everyone was just moments from a successful robbery but will now spend the next several years staring at those cold rods of steel in their jail cell. Of course, this story didn’t happen at a real bank; it occurred at my escape room in Beavercreek, Ohio. However, the end result is what happens in several of the escape rooms I’ve watched over the course of three years at the business a partner and I own, called Great Escape Game: one small miscommunication costs the success of the team.
Chapter One
What is an Escape Room?
“Fear not the unknown. It is a sea of possibilities.”
—Tom Althouse—
The first question people always ask is “What is an escape room?” An escape room is a themed space at an actual physical location where you must solve puzzles, crack codes, and find hidden objects to achieve a set goal. The overall task for each room is completely different and based on the theme of the room. For example, in Great Escape’s Bank Vault room, you must collect all the loot and escape before getting arrested. In our Western Saloon room, you need to find the deed to the saloon and get out of town before the prospector and his men get back. Each of the rooms is also decorated to coincide with the theme. Our Egyptian Tomb room has hieroglyphics on every wall, a gold painted ceiling, huge columns, an eight-foot statue, and the sarcophagus of the pharaoh in the room. I even flew to Egypt to make sure the details in the room were perfect. The idea is to make you truly feel as though you are in the scenario that the room is portraying. At Great Escape, every single puzzle, clue, poster, prop, and object is related to the specific theme of the room. If you are playing Great Escape’s Virus Outbreak room, you will encounter science and medical-related puzzles and clues that you would easily find in an actual medical laboratory.
The idea of an escape room might sound intimidating, but I promise it’s more fun than it is nerve-racking. You won’t need any prior knowledge going into any of our rooms. The unique aspect of playing an escape room, especially one of ours, is that it takes all kinds of people to complete the game. Within each room there are different puzzles and clues that require various parts of the brain to solve. When a group of individuals enters a room, puzzles that are easy for one person may be difficult for another, and vice versa. This experience is true even for me. When I play an escape room, my mind works in a very specific way that is great at solving certain things and not so good at others. This is accurate with regard to nearly everyone who comes to Great Escape.
Each of our rooms holds up to eight individuals and is perfect for small or large groups. You work as a team to escape the room while the clock is ticking down from 60 minutes. Escape rooms are great for groups of friends, families, birthday parties, and work events. Escape rooms are something that almost all ages can enjoy. It’s a social thing to do on any night of the week that is fun for all ages. You have one goal at Great Escape: escape the room in under one hour, which, I’ll refer to at times as “winning”; “losing” will refer to failing to escape the room in one hour. The best part of the escape room is everyone must put their phones away and interact with each other in person. While these challenges are a lot of fun, they can add a lot of pressure as well.
Observation 1
Experience something new often. You might have a little fun in the process.
Chapter Two
How the Mind Works When There is Pressure in a Situation
“Pressure busts pipes, but pressure makes diamonds.”
—Earl Boykins—
Escape rooms can be stressful situations. Before you enter an escape room you have no clue what the inside of the room looks like, how the puzzles are setup, or how much detail the room has. The puzzles and clues are a complete mystery, and nothing can prepare you for the pressure you will feel once that timer starts. Although the difficulty of the room is defined before you enter, a sense of anticipation can sometimes overwhelm you. I know from personal experience there are times where my heart starts to race prior to entering an unknown adventure such as an escape room. This excitement and energy can be a wonderful feeling to have; however, too much exhilaration and anxiety can cause your brain to nearly shut down and almost stop responding to the challenge at hand. This shutting down of the brain happens to me, teenagers, adults, men, women, people who want to win, and—as you’ll read later in this chapter—even doctors.
A prime example of buckling under pressure occurred one day when two groups from the same organization arrived to play escape rooms. One of the groups was set to play the Bank Vault, and the group I was monitoring had selected the Virus Outbreak. Both the groups were to start at the same time, and a little bit of competitive smack talking between both sides was present in the lobby. We put the Bank Vault group in first, and then I escorted my group into the Virus Outbreak. Game flow was somewhat slow with my group, which was struggling early on. This didn’t set up the group members mentally for a strong finish, and halfway through the game I noticed a lady trying to force open a red medical bag that was in the room. I got on the microphone and told her she didn’t need to pry anything open, at which point she set the red bag down. A minute later she was trying to force the red bag open again. I got on the microphone and asked her to please stop and reminded her that nothing in the room needed to be pried open. After my prompt, she set the red bag down for a second time. A seemingly brief moment passed by and for the third time she had the red bag in her hand trying to pry it open! I couldn’t believe it. Just minutes prior to this third attempt, I had clearly told her twice over the speaker in the room to stop trying to pry open the bag, not to mention that prior to the game starting, I had covered the rules of no prying or forcing things open. Yet, she was attempting to pull this bag apart again. I once again picked up the microphone and told her to stop. She was not listening to me and kept pulling apart the red bag. Finally, the zipper holding the contents inside gave way and revealed the medical vials that would be used for the next task.
Why didn’t she listen to me? I was practically yelling at her to stop, but she didn’t pay any attention to my warnings. The group ended up losing badly and afterwards I got a chance to speak with the woman about her actions in the Outbreak room. She didn’t seem to have any remorse and told me “she had to win.” She spent more time trying to find shortcuts than actually playing the game. Ultimately, that type of thinking cost the group the win. In this case, she couldn’t take the pressure and burst like a pipe that had been frozen.
The Virus Outbreak is one of Great Escape’s hardest escape rooms to solve. It involves a wide variety of puzzles and tasks that require multiple thinking patterns from the active participants, making it one of the hardest experiences for players to attempt with only two people. The Virus Outbreak also offers one of its hardest puzzles Great Escape has which can be found towards the end of the experience. When you get to this puzzle, you typically have around 10 minutes left to solve and finish the final Virus Outbreak game. Sounds like plenty of time, right? It should be; however, this last task of the room is a complex three-part puzzle. Once you understand what you are looking for, the first two parts are straight forward, and most groups get past those two parts of the puzzle within five minutes. It’s the last part of that game that requires some complex thinking. You might be thinking to yourself, “So what? All escape rooms require some level of complex thinking,” and you’d be right; however, the timing of when you arrive to this difficult challenge is what shuts down the minds of even some of the best escape room artists. Everyone in the group knows the end is near. Humans only have a limited amount of willpower, and as participants get tripped up throughout the experience, this willpower and ability to focus breaks down. This puts an additional level of stress on people that is almost indescribable yet painfully obvious to observe when watching an escape room from the game master’s perspective.
In a memorable example, I watched a group of players playing their first escape room. Within that group there were a variety of skill sets and professions, one of which was a medical doctor. The game doesn’t require previous medical knowledge, but if you have it, then you will be a lot better suited to beat the difficult puzzle at the end. The group was doing well and was working on the last puzzle with about five minutes to go. The last step was too complicated for the group, and it had medical-related clues; so, group members called the doctor over to see if he could finish it. Once the doctor got the puzzle sheet in his hand, someone in the group yelled, “Less than five minutes!” On a side note, yelling the time left in your game before you die of a deadly virus usually adds more stress to the individuals playing the game, and, in general, does not help. Anyway, the puzzle has to do with blood types and the third portion of the three-part game is written in a way that isn’t straight-forward. You must look at it from a bird’s-eye view to understand what it is saying. Players almost always read it on the surface and don’t try to figure out what it’s really asking you to solve due to the rushed nature of when they arrive to it. On top of that, the puzzle is in a wall cabinet, and for the only time in the game, everyone is huddled around one spot unable to see what the people in front can see. This puts even more stress on the person, or two, that are trying to figure out the last part of the puzzle. The doctor was not immune to this stress.
Even though he had five minutes left in the game, his brain shut down. The habits his brain had formed might have been useful for surgery or other crucial skills in the medical field, but it wasn’t programmed for this kind of challenge. It was a stressful time and all eyes were on him. This was unchartered territory for the doctor, and the clock was ticking. Five, four, three, two, one. Time’s up! The group had failed. I walked into the room where everyone was laughing over their failed attempt to escape. Everyone, that is, except for the doctor who just stood there staring at the piece of paper in his hands. I took a couple of moments to explain how to find the last number they needed. Everyone gave their best “ah-ha” out loud, and the doctor shook his head, acknowledging he now understood how to get there. He was so disappointed in himself. I’m sure he’d been in more stressful situations than an escape room and that he had performed his job to the best degree possible; however, this was a different kind of stress. The brain develops automatic responses to habits it has created during a lifetime, and his brain had never experienced this before. In the last five minutes of the game his mind shut down and knowing the exact time in which failure would occur, he couldn’t recover from it. Even the best among us can suffer from a small amount of pressure. Once again, the pipe had burst.
Observation 2
Understand how you function under pressure so that you’ll be prepared for it in the future. You can’t be successful if you can’t handle pressure.
Chapter Three
Self-fulfilling Prophecy; Think Your Way to Success or to Failure
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
—Henry Ford—
Often in our escape games there are two or more groups of people that don’t know each other in one room. This happens because each room holds up to eight individuals, and on busy nights, two separate groups that want to play at the same time could potentially be sharing a room. These mixed teams have a similar win/lose ratio when compared to rooms where everyone knows each other. However, one thing that has stuck out to me when it comes to combined teams. Those who go into the rooms with a negative mindset about having strangers join their group will lose more often than they will win. The teams that welcome strangers into their now shared experience will win more times than lose.
I remember one group of adults—with members probably in their thirties—that was waiting in the lobby for their game to start. We told the group members that two other people who had previously reserved spots would be joining them to play the Outbreak room. One of the women in the group was very irritated by the fact that there were going to be other people trying to find the virus antidote with them. She proclaimed to anyone that would listen to her that she didn’t want to play with anyone outside of her group. We’ll call her Ms. Stranger Danger. I tried to explain the potential benefits of having more people in the room, but Ms. Stranger Danger wasn’t buying any of it. The two remaining players showed up shortly after this discussion, and everyone was ready to begin. If there are strangers playing a room together, I make them introduce themselves before taking them inside their escape room. I also explain that escape rooms are won by excellent communication, and it’s vital to the success of the group if everyone connects well amongst each other. The players in each group introduced themselves, I went over the rules to the game, and then I put them in the room.
Game play progressed at a normal rate, and everyone was chipping in. I did start to notice that the woman who initially didn’t want anyone else in the room with her group, Ms. Stranger Danger, wasn’t talking with the stranger couple her group had just met 15 minutes prior. On two occasions, this apparent, or maybe subconscious, refusal to communicate with the strangers had an impact on the game and cost the entire group precious minutes.
The first occasion of no communication occurred when one member of the stranger couple said she noticed a locked box with a big red dot on it, and her comment fell on deaf ears. Later in the game, Ms. Stranger Danger found a red key. She looked around both rooms trying to find what the key opened but couldn’t figure it out. She then placed the key down near where she found it. A minute went by before the stranger woman, who’d found the box earlier, found the red key and knew exactly where it went. Had Ms. Stranger Danger said she’d found a red key or listened when the girl noticed the red dot on the locked box, they could have easily saved one or two minutes. In escape rooms one minute can mean the difference between winning and losing.
A comparable situation occurred toward the end of the same game. When entering the Outbreak room there is a monitor on the tabletop toward the left. This monitor cannot turn on until players access the second room. The other member of the stranger couple, a man, made a statement out loud that maybe there would be a way to turn on the monitor. Later in the game, such an opportunity arose. Ms. Stranger Danger had found the button on the wall that said, “monitor” and pushed it. This monitor control was in the second room but turns on the screen in the first room. Ms. Stranger Danger hit the button, and nothing happened—nothing she could see anyway. In the first room the monitor turned on, but no one had noticed. She hit the button again, which turned off the monitor in the first room that she had just turned on. Thinking the button meant nothing she walked away. She did this without telling the stranger man who was looking for a way to turn on the monitor in the beginning of the game. Luckily for them, they asked for a hint shortly afterward that helped them solve the mystery of the monitor, thereby not losing much time.
Overall the stranger couple solved a good portion of the puzzles throughout the game, and it looked as though both groups would emerge from the Outbreak as winners. With 10 minutes left in the game the group was exactly where it needed to be. Seven minutes left. Four minutes left. One-minute left. Dead. The game was over. The group had failed. The group had all of the puzzles completed but ran out of time opening the last lock box, which would have given the group the doctor’s radio frequency identification (RFID) card to escape the laboratory in time. All that was needed was one extra minute. Sixty seconds would have given them more than enough time to come away victorious. Just one minute. After the game the entire group went out to the lobby to get its picture taken.
The stranger couple left, leaving behind the original group, and thanked me for the experience. I stood there and talked to the original group for a couple of minutes after the entire group had “died of a deadly virus.” The group’s members were disappointed that they had lost. I told them how close they were and ensured them that they did an excellent job. Just before leaving the building, Ms. Stranger Danger looked at me and said, “We would have won if it was just us,” and then walked out of the door. In her mind she didn’t want the strangers there, and that was evident by watching her body language and lack of communication throughout the experience. I hate to say that Ms. Stranger Danger’s displeasure of having outsiders in the room with her had consumed her thoughts, causing them to lose, because that might be a little over the top. However, one thing is for certain, she didn’t want them in there and undoubtedly didn’t want their input. In the end, and in my opinion, it was Ms. Stranger Danger’s attitude towards the strangers that cost them the game. She had thought that they would do worse with strangers in the room, and, therefore, they did.
Life can be funny sometimes and often even a little ironic. Every now and then the universe throws out a test to see if we are paying attention and, on this occasion, I was. This universal check occurred exactly one week after the stranger couple and Ms. Stranger Danger’s failed attempt at the Outbreak, when two groups that didn’t know each other played the same room. It was déjà vu. There were four individuals ready to play the Outbreak, and I had informed them that there were going to be two more people in the room with them. I sometimes dread telling groups this because on some occasions they can get rather upset, just like Ms. Stranger Danger did. However, this group was different. After I told group members that there would be two more players joining them, a woman from the group responded with “Cool!” We’ll call her Ms. Social Butterfly. Moments later, the two strangers arrived and checked in at the front desk. I went over my speech about group communication and had the two groups’ members introduce themselves to each other. Ms. Social Butterfly proclaimed her excitement to the strangers and told them she was glad they were joining them and that they needed all the help they could get.
Just like the previous group with the stranger couple and Ms. Stranger Danger, things progressed at a decent pace. Here’s where it got a little weird. A woman in the stranger couple said there was a red dot on a locked box. Moments later Ms. Social Butterfly found a red key, at which point she immediately handed the red key to the stranger woman and said, “You saw something red right?” The stranger woman took the key and walked over to the box and opened it. Earlier in the game, the other member of the stranger couple, a man, stated that they might be able to find a way to turn on this monitor. Ten minutes later, Ms. Social Butterfly found the monitor button. She then turned around, tapped the stranger man on the shoulder, and pointed out this button to him. She then stated, “This might help you figure out the monitor.” He hit the button twice, which turns the monitor on and then back off, but this time he went into the first room and another member of the group hit the button. The monitor had been turned on. Most importantly, little-to-no time was wasted from a lack of communication.
The group went on to beat the Outbreak with more than seven minutes left, which is quite the accomplishment for a room with only a 15 percent pass rate. After the celebratory end of the game picture, Ms. Social Butterfly thanked the couple for helping the whole group so much. The stranger couple thanked everyone as well and somewhat seriously said they should trade numbers, that way when they play the next escape room, they’ll be able take on the next journey as a now united team. How awesome is that?! It was probably one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had at Great Escape, minus the ghost in the Outbreak room—don’t worry I’ll tell you about the hauntings later in this book! Two nearly identical scenarios in the same room and the same problems occur within a week. The only difference was the attitude each set of teams had about each other before they began. If the team members thought it was bad to be with strangers, then they increased their likelihood of failure and miscommunication. If they didn’t mind, or even embraced being with strangers, they passed more often or, at minimum, performed with fewer mistakes. Not only did the welcoming groups pass more often, but from what I’ve observed, they seemed to have a more enjoyable time than groups that weren’t as welcoming.
Observation 3
Positive thinking will lead you in the direction of positive results.
Chapter Four
A Group’s Thought Process Before It Goes into a Room Often Determines Its Success
“The strongest factor for success is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, and believing you’ll get it.”
—John Assaraf—
Escape rooms are a blast. I enjoy them so much that in a very short time after I had opened my escape room, I had played most of the escape rooms within an hour of my location. I had to start branching out slowly into other cities that were further away to play something new. One day my business partner, my daytime manager, and I, decided to go to Indianapolis, Indiana to play some escape games. We played two games in downtown Indianapolis and then went to another business about 20 minutes away. We won both experiences at the first location and were feeling rather confident about our abilities.
At the second escape room business, we started off by playing a Revolutionary War room. This was a fun room that had an incredible amount of detail in the props, and the room itself wasn’t short on interesting arrangements. This revolutionary experience wasn’t too challenging for us, and we easily beat the game with 20 minutes left. We decided to play one more before we made the trip back home. This room was a World War II experience. In this scenario, we were American captives in a German prison camp and found ourselves with a one-hour window to escape to freedom. We were excited to play the game as the theme appealed to all of us. Before the game master put us in the room, we asked him what the escape rate was. Big mistake on our end. He told us the escape rate was less than one percent. I thought to myself that couldn’t be right; so, I questioned him again about it.
I am a strong believer that anyone can do and accomplish anything in life he or she sets his or her mind to. This is true especially when it comes to beating an escape room with two other guys that are good at playing them. However, after our game master told us about the less than one percent pass rate, our hearts sank. For a moment, my unwavering self-esteem and willpower gave way. We gave up on ourselves before the time even began.
Throughout the game we would find cool props and instead of focusing 100 percent on winning, we would find ourselves playing like kids with all the cool features the room had to offer. We knew we were failing before the game even started;
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 29.10.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6261-4
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