I love escape rooms. A chance to get competitive, whilst showing that teamwork makes the dream work and solving puzzles with friends - what's not to love?
Unfortunately, COVID-19 had other ideas. Hereupon came the novelty of virtual escape rooms. I had the opportunity to experience this new phenomena last week in a 'virtual social' at work (which involved cocktails being delivered to us for the big event). We were split into teams and raced against the clock (and each other) to complete the 'Out of Hours' escape room on Trapped in the Web.
This consisted of each team leader sharing their screen via Microsoft Teams and each of us working together to figure out solutions to various puzzles. Despite virtual escape rooms having a bad rap, I genuinely enjoyed figuring out the clues and completing all the the puzzles. Granted, it's not the same as being in a real escape room, however I think that this format actually encourages more teamwork, as in real escape rooms each team member can work somewhat independently, whereas the online format makes it so that if you want to figure out a specific clue or go back at any point, you literally need to ask the leader to work with you.
Although my team won, I found the puzzles quite challenging and we needed to use the hints two or three times (which is probably why we won). The biggest downside for me was definitely the format of the puzzles - there was a lot of going back and forth trying to find the correct pages with the information we needed, whereas in a real escape room once you solve a puzzle you can set it aside and move on. Furthermore, it was sometimes hard to read the small print via the shared screen, which given that this was our only option (as we couldn't all individually open up the webpage and still work as a team as we'd be on different pages at different times), could definitely be improved.
As the proverb goes: 'necessity is the mother of mother of invention', and although I don't think that virtual escape rooms will continue to thrive after lockdown, I definitely think that they get more stick than they deserve and that they serve a purpose in these difficult times.
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