creds; yorkiepie
I used to work as a game master in an escape room called Live Escape. I know, you're already wondering if I'm the psychopath in this story. While most people accused me of taking too much pleasure watching people struggle to solve puzzles and use locks, the truth was I was bored. You can only laugh at the same jokes about finding your way out of the bathroom or climbing through the ceiling tiles to escape so many times before you can't help but roll your eyes. Anyway, the job wasn't all bad. Most people came in with a good attitude, ready to have fun with their friends. Unlike my time as a server, I rarely had to deal with an angry customer.
Closing time was both the best and worst part of the job. On busy weekend nights, four or five of us would be scheduled to close down the large warehouse containing four rooms. We would plug our iPods into the main sound system and send Disney songs reverberating through every room. Some of my favorite memories were made singing along, laughing, and gossiping about other employees late into the night as we cleaned the place from top to bottom.
On weeknights, though, only one employee was required to close. Live Escape alone after close was a completely different experience than what our customers knew. The emptiness and silence of the warehouse was uncanny compared to the constant cacophony of sound which emanated from every room during daylight hours. There was always the feeling in the back of my mind that someone was in the next room, even though I knew I was all alone. Sometimes I would hear noises coming from the other side of the warehouse where the power generator was kept. It was easy to play off as a power surge or small creature skittering around, but it still made me shake with nervousness. Every time I closed the front door for the final time, I would imagine a face staring at me from the darkness.
All of our rooms are generation three, which, for non-escape room nerds, means they're pretty darn high-tech. Most of our locks opened by sounds or specific touch patterns, not standard locks and keys. Live Escape was well known for its theatricality. We had the typical escape room themes, which I'm sure some of you have played before. Sherlock's Office, the Vault, and the '80s. These rooms were pretty well-received by our customers, but we knew the owners would never stop pushing the envelope as far as tech goes. The newest room was something different. It was called the Farmhouse. I was one of the first to learn the new room, which meant I was one of the few who could fix it when things went wrong. That often involved climbing around in the narrow "backstage" area replacing wires and other various things.
Although the game was contained within the warehouse, the owners had done a fantastic job of making it feel like the building was somewhere outside of space and time. They spared no expense, constructing a two-story wooden building at three-fourths scale and enclosing it in a windowless room with fake stars painted on the ceiling.
While our other rooms were pretty family-friendly, the Farmhouse was strictly limited to 18 and up. In the game, players were told that they had recently inherited an old farmhouse from their estranged grandfather who had mysteriously disappeared. They were meant to investigate the old man's disappearance. Although the building seemed at first to only have a small living room and kitchen, players were meant to gradually unlock secret tunnels leading to multiple hidden rooms. This is where the game gets dark. According to the story, the grandfather was actually involved in some weird demon stuff and had been committing sacrifices to his dark lord in the attic. Players were invited to climb the ladder upstairs where a Ouija board awaited them. They had to call upon the spirits of the dead to tell them how to escape the demonic farmhouse with their souls still intact. I told you this wasn't your typical game. Most of our customers loved it, especially the dark and edgy twenty-somethings. They all acted tough, but I could see the fear in their eyes as the planchet seemed to move by itself. It was, of course, controlled by magnets. To escape, players needed to commit human sacrifice. They were meant to trick the demon by placing a fake body on the kitchen table which would then activate a trap door, allowing them to crawl out the back of the house and into the light of our lobby where they could laugh at how afraid they'd been just moments earlier.
