This is the story of how I spent my Saturday night handcuffed in a locked room.

It all started out when my friend, we’ll call him Robert (for the sake of his privacy), was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to jail. As I looked into his devastated eyes in that courtroom, I knew what I had to do. The next day at lunch I made sure to get caught not paying for my Bistro, so that I too would be sentenced to death in prison. After bribing the guards, all I had to do was break us out within an hour. Sadly, Robert and I did not make it out that day. Apparently I severely lack in prison breaking abilities.

The previous narrative is a struggle faced by Escape Room players every single day.

The concept of Escape Room is a real life version of the popular online game. Locked in a room for 60 minutes, players must solve a series of puzzles and codes to find a way out. Escape Room offers three different levels of rooms, the easiest being “The Theory of Everything” then “Secret Agent.” With these two rooms, the player can receive clues as they move throughout the game.

However, my egotistical teammates convinced me we could escape the hardest room, “Prison Break.” Said teammates realized they were wrong as we sat handcuffed without clues wondering how 5% of people had succeeded in getting out of this dungeon.

While we were utterly unsuccessful, Escape Room was still a distinctly entertaining experience. As we tried in vain to find keys to open a drawer that might contain a code to another drawer that could possibly give us any kind of hint to breaking free, the game challenged us in a unique way. I can’t wait to see if I am as lousy a secret agent as I am a criminal escapee.