Why Are Escape Rooms so Popular in New Delhi?

I’m standing in a room measuring 3 feet by 2 feet, wearing an oversized lab coat drenched in blood, and screaming at the top of my voice for clues. On the other side of the wall, my girlfriend is sifting through diaries, looking for answers to a 16-word crossword. All the while, a big clock on a monitor nearby is counting down to 00:00. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. If we can’t get the words right and find the next clue—which will lead us to another clue and so on—we might not find the cure to a rabid zombie epidemic. Humanity’s fate lies in our hands.

Well, that’s hardly true but we believe it anyway. We’re in a ‘quarantine zone’, inside one of the several escape rooms in New Delhi, solving a mystery which boggles the mind with gory details and pressure-oriented tasks. Despite both of us having exciting ‘millennial jobs’, an escape room seemed like a thrilling way to spend an evening. We could’ve got dinner or grabbed overpriced drinks at an undersized bar, but the chance to save the world from a zombie apocalypse seemed far rarer.

Escape rooms peddling this high-octane mental calculus have been rising in popularity for some time now, with differing scenarios but all aimed at helping you discover how clever you are by solving puzzles and uncovering lost secrets typically within an hour. The joints usually have 2-6 rooms, with prices varying from Rs 800 to Rs 2,000 per person for an experience. The establishment I was at, Ctrl.Shift.Esc in Hauz Khas, has already opened a subsidiary in Gurgaon. There’s another one nearby called The Hidden Hour, which opened in October, 2016. One called Codebreak 60 propped up in Kamala Nagar last August, to separate the students of Delhi University from their pocket money, and after beginning operations four years ago, Mystery Rooms—the Mukesh Ambani of Escape Rooms—has expanded to Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Goa, Pune, Jalandhar and Ludhiana, while another branch is in the works in Delhi’s Connaught Place to meet the rising demand.

According to psychologist Dr. GB Singh, the rise of the escape-room phenomenon is linked to the cheap and collective high it lends. “It provides a high adrenaline rush, which brings back childhood and autobiographical memories imprinted in our brains. It’s like riding a roller-coaster. It releases endorphins which help you feel good.” But why people are gravitating towards escape rooms over contemporary pastimes like sports or gaming? Dr. Singh pegs it to the lower investment of time that escape rooms require. “It’s a short high, not a long-term solution to any underlying problems.”

Thinking of this high took me back inside the escape room in Hauz Khas Village. We were struggling and time was running out. The activity, I quickly figured, needed a larger group than the two of us for participants to keep track of multiple lines of clues, underlying one of the reasons it excels as a bonding exercise. When we neared the finishing line and found the last key, we didn’t know which box to open, whose location we later found lay in a clue we had uncovered at the beginning. FML.

Time stays undefeated. We lost, and the world transformed into Zombieland, forcing us to walk out after the stipulated hour mark. Just then, a larger group emerged, after finishing their Game of Thrones puzzle. The group of five comprised three doctors and two fashion executives, each not older than 30, celebrating one of their birthdays by slaying the Night King.

“Except malls, Delhi doesn’t have anything. And we all do not enjoy gaming or sports or cards,” said birthday girl Vyoma Noutiyal, as her friend Lavanya Seth bellowed from behind, “All of us actually talked today rather than singing along and ordering shots.”

As we exited the escape room and stepped into the middle lane of Haus Khas Village, I noticed that the once holy grail of Delhi’s party night was ‘completely ded’ even for 9pm on a Thursday. The party-goers were outnumbered by promoters, who were thrusting fliers for discounted food and drinks in our faces. The place which revolutionised Delhi’s party circuit in the early 2010s in conjunction with the Honey Singh Era (RIP) seemed too desperate for our presence—the very antithesis of the cool it once peddled.

As the spectre of a long night of habitual drinking loomed large, inducing the effects of a sleeping pill rather than excitement, the desire of escaping to the interactive stress of the escape room finally made sense to me. Sure, they’re high pressured, but just enough to be exhilarating, and short enough to not leave you bored. I kept wondering if I should’ve checked in on Facebook for extra clues as the gamemaker had suggested (social media engagement FTW).

My girlfriend btw, gave me shit for days for making puppy eyes at the CCTV camera, pleading the gamemakers for help. I finally went for redemption, asking her if we should go at it again.

“Do you need a clue?” she shot back.

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