• Escape-room company Puzzle Break has created an online version of their traditionally in-person escape room, The Grimm Escape.
  • Participants join a Zoom video call for a 90-minute game filled with team-building, problem-solving, and puzzles.
  • The games are aimed at both small groups and companies. Online bookings cost $25 a person for groups of 4 to 6, with larger groups and enterprise pricing available upon request.
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The coronavirus pandemic has caused people to rely on digital entertainment like never before and companies are transforming their offerings to reach people staying indoors. That’s why US-based Puzzle Break created a virtual escape room that challenges you and your friends or coworkers to solve your way out of it via a Zoom call.

Escape rooms, a booming industry that’s increased in popularity over the last decade, centers around a game typically played in-person with a group of people locked in a room with various clues they have to solve in order to “escape” the room within a set time limit.

Puzzle Break modified its approach to keep business going through the pandemic by providing customers with a guided, virtual experience of their escape room, The Grimm Escape.

“It was simultaneously necessary and heartbreaking to close our in-person experiences,” Nate Martin, CEO and founder of Puzzle Break, said. “As we’ve turned to the virtual experience, we’ve been inspired by how the magic of escape rooms can be translated online for this new normal. In our trial runs, it’s clear that the unique mix of creativity, fun, adrenaline, and bonding is just as powerful in the online world.”

Participants join in the virtual escape room via video-conference call. They have 90 minutes to solve all of the puzzle's clues in guided games curated by a Puzzle Break employee. You provide the teammates, so there's no unknown players.

After the 90-minute challenge, players are debriefed to discuss the experience.

Groups of four to six players can book a virtual escape room online for $25 dollars each, and then there's the larger enterprise version aimed at larger groups and companies. Groups need at least four players, but those with more than seven people must email Puzzle Break to get a quote on pricing.

Customers need to be able to run Zoom Client for Meetings on their computer but don't need to have a Zoom account.

Those interested in booking a virtual escape room can head over to Puzzle Break's website.