“The escape room trend is late to bloom in the UK, yet has roots in the Dungeons & Dragons craze that started in the 1970s, and the adventure games that were big on British television in the 1980s. Now Get Out of That (1981) and the sci-fi themed The Adventure Game, which started in 1980, pre-dated the most successful adventure show of them all: The Crystal Maze, which first aired in 1990.”
“Elsewhere, museums and schools are exploiting escape rooms as interactive alternatives to historical reenactment or creepy waxworks of old sailors. Nicholson, the academic who designed the Red Bull game, has created an escape-room-inspired game for Canadian schools about the country’s electoral system. “Escape rooms have something other group activities don’t have because they are not about competition but collaboration,” he says. “We now want to design games that can make a real difference.””
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Guardian News and Media. (2019, April 1). Get me out of here! why escape rooms have become a global craze. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/apr/01/get-out-how-escape-rooms-became-a-global-craze
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Escape rooms have some similar activities to any learning site: reading, analysis, wading through new information. And yet escape rooms are considered a treat or fun outing for many where museums may not be. Perhaps there’s a way to bring the collaboration and victory of an escape room experience into a handout.
