BREAK OUT The smooth, metal door clicks shut behind us. We glance around. A television screen in the upper corner lights up the dilapidated hotel room. A twinsized bed sits in the middle with nightstands on each side. A sink fills one of the corners, the mirror above it pried away at the screws. In the opposite corner rocks a cream, flower-patterned armchair, the fabric around the cushion torn. We have entered Room 13. The room is part of Breakout Kansas City, a new escape game located in the River Market. To break out, players must crack codes and solve riddles. Two to eight players can book a room and pay $28 each to be locked up. Breakout KC opened its first room in May and is now fully open with four themed rooms: Room 13, Szechuan Secret, The Truman Room and River Quay Casino. Seniors Aubrey Makar, Kathleen Watz, Chloe Barrett, Chioma Okuagu, Alex D’Alesio and I shift our gaze to the television screen. We are trapped, and the screen lists the guidelines for getting out: We are allowed three clues from one of the Breakout KC employees. They will watch us through a camera mounted in the opposite corner. Ultimately, we must punch a four digit code into the door’s keypad to unlock it. We have 60 minutes. Go. We scramble. Tearing off the bed covers, examining the tube of toothpaste, flipping the picture frames, it becomes clear that we have no clue what we’re looking for. But, our only choice BY SOPHIE NEDELCO is to continue to frantically CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF search. We begin to come across tiny clues but struggle to decipher the meaning of them. At this point, it became clear that Makar and Watz would lead the break out and had a mind for solving the riddles. They dove into the game immediately and kept focus for the entire hour. While we were a confident group going in, that confidence quickly drained as we realized our inexperience as escape artists. Breaking out at Breakout Kansas City isn’t easy; it requires precise teamwork, a relentless attitude and some mild math skills. The success rates per room range from 18 to 34 percent, reflecting the difficulty of the game. According to Breakout Kansas City’s co-owner Lucas Thompson, they would rather players be right on the verge of breaking out than actually break out. But, the difficulty (as well as the pricy $28) was worth it. Although we were locked in a room, it was as if we had taken on a dramatic adventure. According to Breakout Kansas City’s co-owner Matt Baysinger, one of the goals of the escape game is to involve players in interactive entertainment instead of consumed entertainment such as going to movies or sporting games. As our time dwindled, our panic rose, and in the last seconds of the game, we laughed, frantically punching numbers into the keypad. We had failed to escape. So the metal door that had menacingly locked behind us 60 minutes earlier was opened, and we exited Room 13.
THIS NEW
ESCAPE GAME IN THE RIVER
MARKET HAS PLAYERS
PAYING TO BE LOCKED UP.
LE JOURNAL September 2015
CHALLENGING //
24
