This weekend, be a superhero, defuse a bomb, rescue a Bollywood star

Escape room games are getting more imaginative, using Indian themes, encouraging large groups to have themselves locked up for fun.

In September last year, soft-skills trainer Rohan Mehra found himself and his wife Khushbu locked in a pirate-themed room at the Goregaon Sports Complex. It held all the material they needed to plot their escape. But 12 minutes in, they were clueless. Neither could make sense of the buccaneer posters, seafaring gadgets and shipwreck memorabilia.

“We had three helplines. We never imagined we’d use one to take the first step,” says Mehra, laughing as he recalls the experience. The clue, it turns out, was right in front of them – a pack of cards a numbered code that led to the next step and the next, and finally, the key to the door. “There’s a kind of exhilaration and thrill in solving a puzzle you’re part of,” he says. “But time flies inside that room. We extended the deadline to complete it. But we didn’t know where the one-and-a-half-hours went!”

Enthusiasts around the world have been bolting themselves inside theme-based, specially constructed rooms since the Real Escape Game opened in Kyoto, Japan, in 2007. In Mumbai, ClueHunt opened the first one in 2013 and operates 14 across Mumbai. Three other companies have set up their own trapdoors and combination locks. Teams of two to eight can try to pull off a bank robbery, thwart terror attempts on a Metro station, locate a filmstar kidnapped by a don, or save the city from a viral outbreak. If you’re so inclined, you can also work your way out of a psychiatric ward.

Tourists love escape rooms so much that TripAdvisor now lists them in a separate category. And that first game in Japan? It’s now a mass event with hundreds of players in one giant location. The phenomenon has spread to every continent. One company, Escape Hunt, with escape rooms in Hyderabad, Lisbon, Auckland and Jeddah, is now listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Clue Hunt now operates 14 game rooms across Mumbai.

Signing up for a locked room experience is pretty much the same around the world. You book a slot, show up with your team, surrender your cellphones, get briefed and get started.

But the rooms can be different. European rooms are notoriously complex, with puzzles within puzzles. The Japanese games rely on observational skills – one room is a plain red box, you must squint to find cracks and clues. Americans prefer to team up with strangers to create bigger groups. Indians like to do it family style.

They all have two things in common, though — a relatable backstory and challenges that will make players want to curse and congratulate the organisers at the same time.

In India, rooms operate across the major cities, and in tourist hubs like Goa.

Indian participants, like these who completed No Escape’s pirate-themed challenge, tend to focus on winning, so operators are generous with clues.

“On average, we have one or two rooms per game in India,” says Presley Fernandes, founder of No Escape, which also sets up escape rooms in hotels and offices.

“People like logical clues even if they haven’t been able to solve the puzzle,” adds Sandeep Mahendra, who runs The Amazing Escape.

Ketan Chhatpar set up ClueHunt in 2013, with a generic murder mystery. “In two months I realised people want to play the hero,” he says. Their second game had participants racing to defuse a time bomb. “One of our games, with a missing scientist, isn’t popular because it sounds dull,” he says. His solution: A Mr India-style makeover that debuts this month.

Kids won’t necessarily hold you back — Chhatpar remembers an eight-year-old girl who worked out a Roman numeral clues while her dad stood by flummoxed. But relationships might. Fernandes has seen couples bicker over who should have checked a clue box. “Indians come with bravado, mistakenly thinking they’ll be out in 20 minutes. Tourists tend to strategise better,” says Mahendra.

Desi dilemmas

It’s a nascent market, so Indians have a lot of questions. The most common is, What do we get if we succeed? There are no prizes, of course. Another one: what happens to us if we don’t figure it out? Obviously, you won’t be trapped in there forever, but people worry. “We monitor our groups, and adapt our hints to push them along, particularly if they’re only a few steps to the end,” says Mahendra.

Chhatpar says many customers would ask to see the room before they decided to commit, “only because they had no idea what we were offering”. These concerns are still more understandable than some of the FAQ sections on American sites. “Will I be touched?” is apparently one common query. “Can we bring alcohol?” is another. And, for some reason, “Will the door really be locked?” Yes it will! Grow up.

Locked room mystery experiences tend to include clues the whole family can solve, putting the emphasis on collaboration and communication. There’s no prize for winning.