Escape rooms, or puzzle rooms, seem to be very trendy right now. Today my friend Madeleine and I joined the trend and experienced the challenge of having to ‘escape’ from a dark room by solving various puzzles and riddles pretty much in the dark.

We were at Xcapade in Melbourne trying to figure our way out of a darkened laboratory within one hour. Never having done an escape room before I wasn’t entirely sure what lay ahead as we were briefed on the challenge before us. Pretty soon we were locked into the room with just 1 hour to solve the various puzzles, find the key, and get out of the room.

The picture is a little deceiving because the room was pretty much entirely dark. We were finding our way around with flashlights. Madeleine was pretty good right from the start working out the first few puzzles with pretty much no help from me. My brain took about thirty minutes to warm up and get into the challenge, though I was happy that I did figure out a few of the various puzzles we had to solve.

In the end, while it was certainly not a ‘great escape’ we did manage to free ourselves from the locked room. I’ll admit though, we did have a little help from the staff at Xcapadewho were able to see us on cameras and communicate using a two-way radio.

It was a fun experience and I would certainly be game for trying another escape room.