Beijingers hooked on video game thrills turned real
Escape room puzzles, based on a classic game by a Japanese software company, are attracting young people tired of the karaoke scene
Beijingers have embraced the thrill offered by real-life escape games, with the number of companies based on the attraction growing from about a dozen last year to more than 100.
The entertainment takes its cue from a Japanese video game, first made popular in 2005, in which players are inserted into a mysterious room and must hunt for clues and solve puzzles in order to escape. Within a few years, companies emerged with real-world versions of the game, with entrepreneurs renting industrial space, devising the "solution" and filling it with the necessary furniture and outlandish items.
The trend caught on, with rooms popping up in Harbin in Heilongjiang province , Shanghai and Nanjing in Jiangsu province, as well as in cities outside the mainland, such as Hong Kong.
Tang Yuhong, 30, opened her Lost Real-life Room Escape Studio in the capital last September. It cost her about 100,000 yuan (HK$127,000) to decorate a 44 square metre studio themed as a ghost ship from the 16th century.
"It's very competitive to run the studio, there are so many of them in Beijing now," Tang said. "It's cheap to start the business, but it's challenging to design the puzzles and keep attracting customers."
Groups of at least five people pay 80 yuan each to use the space for an hour. Tang said her prices were higher than those of other studios because she had invested more.
"Someone can simply rent a two or three-bedroom apartment, stick some wallpaper up, arrange a few tables and chairs and run it," she said. "They will still have customers, because right now most young people are tired of dining out, going to karaoke, playing cards or board games. The real-life room-escape games are fresh and trendy."