Abstract
Escape rooms are live action games where “players” are locked into a room and must work together to discover clues, solve puzzles, and ultimately find the way to escape. There are currently over 2,300 escape rooms in the US. Given the popularity of escape rooms, it is no wonder they have been repurposed for the classroom to aid in student learning. Though research into utilizing escape rooms as an educational tool is still in its nascent stages, studies have provided evidence that these academic escape room activities are useful in enhancing student collaboration and communication skills and in building specific content knowledge. This chapter will explore the history of escape rooms, review research on the benefits of using escape rooms in classrooms as an instructional tool, and finally, discuss the results of the pilot test of a compost themed escape room game designed for use in middle school science classrooms.
TopIntroduction
The door locks behind you with an ominous click. You look at the 7 strangers in the room with you. You have 60 minutes to somehow find a way out. There is a keypad next to the exit. Too bad none of you know the code. You explore the room and find a wall mounted phone with no dial tone, a wooden box mounted to the wall with a small hole on top, a control panel with no electricity, a lab coat, a locked door marked ‘Engine Room’, and a table with a vase of flowers, a microscope, a projector, and a short length of copper wire. You have no idea what is helpful and what isn’t, but clues to the way out have to be here somewhere. A second round of looking reveals there is a key attached to a cork at the bottom of the wooden box, however the box won’t open, and the hole is too small to reach in for it. You find another key in the pocket of the lab coat, but it doesn’t fit in the lock on the Engine Room door. Your job is to put the pieces together, solve the puzzles, and find your way out. How will you get electricity to the control panel? How will you get the key out of the wooden box? What does the second key open? How will you figure out the code to the exit door? What new puzzles will you reveal along the way? The only way you’ll find your way out of here is if you work together. With another glance at the time quickly ticking away you get to work (scene adapted from The Formula; Asmodee, 2017).
It may seem odd that strangers would pay to be locked in a room together only to figure out a way to leave. Whether you consider the premise odd or not, escape room attractions have only gained in popularity since their inception (Crosti, 2017; McConnon, 2018; L. Spira, 2018), Escape rooms are live action games where ‘players’ are locked into a room and must work together to discover clues, solve puzzles, and ultimately find the way to escape.
The first escape room, referred to as ‘Real Escape Game’, was created in Japan in 2007 by Takao Kato, founder of SCRAP Entertainment (Corkill, 2009). When asked about his inspiration for creating an escape room, Kato explained it was inspired by the sense of envy he had as a child when reading novels and manga, “I wondered why interesting things didn’t happen in my life, like they did in books,” he said. “I thought I could create my own adventure, a story, and then invite people to be a part of it.” (as quoted in Corkill, 2009). It seemed he wasn’t the only one who was longing for adventures and stories he didn’t find in his everyday life. From that one room, escape rooms spread across Japan and into China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia. Eventually escape rooms made their way to the United States when Kazuya Iwata, a friend of Kato, opened up a branch of SCRAP under the name of Real Escape Game, in San Francisco, California in 2014. Their debut escape room had over 6000 visitors in the first year (Cheng, 2014).
While escape rooms were blossoming across Asia, Europe began its own Escape Room movement. Unaware of the rising popularity of Real Escape Games, Attila Gyurkovics had the idea to create a live escape game based off of point-and-click puzzle games he was familiar with. Attila was a social worker who specialized in teamwork and often used problem solving computer games in his work (Great Big Story, 2018). He decided to recreate these games in the physical world and so created what he thought was the world’s first escape room in 2010. While it may not have truly been first, Attila’s started another wave of escape room growth, this time across Europe (Lock Academy, n.d.).
Key Terms in this Chapter
LARPing: Live action role-playing game where participants act as characters in a fantasy game and engage in simulated battles and quests.
Collaboration: A group working together on a shared problem to create or produce something.
Quick Response (QR) Codes: A type of matrix barcode which can be scanned with smartphone app to provide access to online resources.
Escape Rooms: A type of live action game where a team of players are locked into a room, or series of rooms, and must gathers clues and solves puzzles to escape.
Takagaism: A type of digital escape game named after Toshimitsu Takagi, the creator of one the first digital escape games.
21st Century Skills: A list of skills or learning dispositions which have been identified as necessary for success in 21 st century society and the workforce.
Design-Based Research: A mixed methodology that involves iterations of design and implementation to design educational innovations.