What does your favourite type of Escape Room say about you?
This is the first part of our on-going attempts to answer that question. To read the introduction to this project, click here.
I. IMPRISONMENT. Someone has locked you in a room and you need to escape. Well, duh. Isn’t every Escape Room like this? Actually, no. The key points here are that you are a captive victim and that liberation is your primary aim. Typically takes the form of a jail cell, a dungeon or serial killer’s lair, but can also be an asylum, mortuary or crypt, if you’re really lucky. Occasionally might even be captive without walls, lost in the woods, a desert, abandoned to your fate. Characterized by: locks, blindfolds, handcuffs, padlocks, more locks and probably some bars (sadly not the drinking kind). You need to Escape The Thing.
Today we are looking at rooms that can be classified as Imprisonment & Escape. Sounds like that should cover pretty much every game around, right? Not really. This is examining rooms where the sole or overwhelmingly dominant motive is simply to get the hell out of there, without side quests to save the world, steal a cake or solve a murder. You are trapped, in a bad situation, against your will, and you need to find a way out. Many of these games, as you would imagine, tend to the intense or horror side – jailbreaks (The Prison, Lucardo), asylums or hospitals, serial killers (13utcher, Escapologic). But they need not all be scary – Jungle Jailbreak (Agent Brains), 46 Below (surviving an Arctic plane crash, Trapp’d) or Detention (the school type, CTRL ALT ESC) are examples where the formula for motivation fits without using horror tropes.
What all these games have in common is that you start them, theoretically, powerless. You are the victim (in the case of prison or detention, maybe of your own stupidity, but still…). You might start the game blindfolded, shackled, in the dark, the team split up and disorientated. You’re not the crack team of lauded masterminds called in to play the hero, you’re the underdogs, fighting to get away from somewhere you really don’t want to be. And this shift in power dynamic can have a big effect on how the game, and your progress through it, is perceived by your brain.
Everyone loves the story of an underdog succeeding. It’s that triumph against adversity, winning despite the odds, that makes a journey much more satisfying. Like a character in a movie, broken to their lowest point only to rise again, this plot line makes for a much more sweeping story arc – not just success but redemption. And in the same way, to undertake this kind of Escape Room journey, from trapped in a dark place to the sunlit uplands of …um… the venue lobby, can create a magnified sense of achievement and confidence. Research shows that this scenario, from victim to victory, is up to 10 times more satisfying than the expected success of a pre-ordained hero.
Throw in also that rooms following the Imprisonment & Escape formula tend to have more physical elements. Whether it is manual, practical tasks, crawling, climbing, or actual running and screaming, even the less intense versions of these games can get the adrenaline pumping. And even though you know, on an intellectual level, that this was all just a game, the adrenaline produced still leads to a release of dopamine as a reward. Dr Katherine Brownlowe says …”(the) brain calming itself down after (a fictionalised intense experience) is actually neuro-chemically very pleasurable…The dopamine release related to the ‘rest-and-digest’ brain response causes an increased sense of well-being”.
Extra happy chemicals might not be the only benefit though. Every woman who has ever walked in the dark with keys gripped between their fingers will recognise the feeling of trying to come up with a plan, a strategy of what to do, how to behave, should the worst things happen. You might have tried to predict your own reaction, anticipate whether you might panic, fight or freeze. Research has been done on this subject with viewers of horror films, and evidence shows that playing through a scenario, by watching a film, can be psychologically beneficial. Asking yourself what you would do in the place of the protagonist (not run towards that freaky graveyard?) and reassuring yourself that you would make better decisions than the fictional characters can strengthen emotional resilience. Coltan Scrivner and Mathias Clasen’s recent study on fans of horror films shows that they have been less psychologically distressed by the pandemic than non-horror fans. Their results show that “exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations”.
It follows that actually acting out this kind of role, in the form of an Escape Room rather than watching a film, could have a similar beneficial effect, especially as actions speak louder than words. You’re not just theorising, you are proving to yourself how you might cope. Your magical thinking “this terrible thing could never happen to me, because I would do x and y and keep safe” is being tested out and proven correct. True, your kidnapper is unlikely to have the codes for his security system written in pigpen on your wall, and counting the coloured highlighters in the stationery cupboard probably won’t open the classroom’s emergency key lockbox. But remaining calm, thinking logically, being observant and communicating well under pressure are transferable skills. Practising those skills in a secure, simulated environment can help you build an emotional toolkit for dealing with a real-life problem. As an artificial set-up, where you know you are safe the whole time, facing the fears and coping with sensory assaults (sirens, flashing lights, jump scares) can be useful in forming a more robust psyche.
In conclusion. You’ve faced a bad situation, where the only focus is to get out of there. You have survived and possibly (whisper it) enjoyed it. Imprisonment & Escape centred rooms, where you are abandoned, humiliated, exercised and stressed, can make you a happier, more confident and emotionally stronger individual.
