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A journey through European escape rooms without leaving home

A journey through European escape rooms without leaving home

Jakub Witosławski |

Escape rooms are often the highest rated local tourist attractions. According to TripAdvisor, in cities such as Los Angeles or Budapest they belong to the most popular forms of entertainment. Nowadays, thanks to the Live Cam solution, you can visit escape rooms located in different countries without leaving your home.

Lithuania, Poland, Croatia, Germany, England, Portugal - the offer of Live Cam puzzle rooms on the Old Continent is growing systematically and reaches more and more exotic places.

In response to the pandemic, the owners and creators of escape rooms started to offer their stationary rooms in Live Cam version. This is a new way to play real puzzle rooms with your friends right from your own home. After logging into a special live panel, the team guides the "game master" by giving him commands and in this way he solves more puzzles, riddles and mysteries and goes through the whole storyline. The transformation of an ordinary room into an escape room Live Cam is possible with any camera, streaming platform and additional lighting. In turn, to take advantage of this opportunity as a player, all you need is access to a computer (or even a smartphone), a web browser and an Internet connection.

- For most Live Cam games, you simply make a reservation for an appointment, and then everyone in the game receives an invitation link. The most popular software used for such games is Zoom, but some escape rooms use Google Hangouts, WhatsApp Video or other solutions. For most of these, it is best to use a computer or laptop for comfort reasons, but they will also work from a phone. Escape room companies developed this system in response to the quarantine and downtime in the market, but it turned out to be so attractive and effective that it is creating an independent trend in the industry - says Bartosz Idzikowski from the escape room website Lock.me.

Slavic atmosphere

"Have you ever wondered what it's like to see things that others can't see? Or to hear voices that others can't hear? You are a patient in a psychiatric ward, and your life is in your hands! Will you be able to escape? Don't waste your chance and hurry up, because the doctor will be back soon". - this is the introduction to the escape room in the Live Cam format with a pleasant name "Psychiatric Hospital", which is located in Wroclaw.

- Each escape room is a reflection of the creativity and imagination of its creators. And we, Poles and Slavs in general, turn out to be not only good at it, but also very courageous in the context of the offered plots. Adding to this technological and scenographic advancement of modern escape rooms, you can count on a really strong experience and immersion in such a fictional world. The Live Cam solution sometimes raises doubts among the enthusiasts whether this experience will be similar to the one in a traditional escape room. We also had these fears, so we have visited Live Cam room from another country for a test - now we have a dozen of them and we have started to offer games in such format - says Karol Skraba, co-owner of Polish company Live Cam Escape from Wroclaw, which currently runs 4 Live Cam rooms.

It is also worth to go to the north-east of Poland - to Lithuania. Lithuanians definitely get it and they have a very rich offer. The company that definitely stands out and allows you to play live in front of the camera is Lost Escape from Kaunas.

- They offer two different stories. If you like science fiction and steampunk climates, you should visit ‘Steampunk Adventure’. Searching for the Tesseract in a professor's office with many machines and strange mechanisms will take you to a dark and futuristic world. And if you prefer a more mystical and magical experience try the confusing Wizard's House - says Evaldas Auglys, CEO of Lost Escape. - Thanks to the Live Cam solution we can show people from all over the world how we do it in Lithuania. What’s funny, some admit that they have never heard of Lithuania at all. We also had a team that thought Lithuania was a city in Africa. For us it is an honor to represent our country and show the global community of escape room enthusiasts that Lithuania exists.

In the south of the Slavic part of Europe it is worth remotely visiting Croatia. There is Puzzle Punks company, which offers two Live Cam rooms - one of them is Secret Treasure of Dubrovnik, which draws players into the colorful history of this medieval city. Players are tasked with finding a lost treasure buried somewhere in the ruins after the Great Earthquake of 1667.

The direction: west!

"A series of murders, Barcelona, 1985 - even in this beautiful city you can't feel safe. Criminals are on the loose, and the only trace they have left are bodies with missing limbs. Meanwhile, the gallery employees found a hidden room with terrifying works..." - This is how the company Xcape Room from Barcelona encourages players to visit the Corpse Gallery escape room. There are more and more companies offering escape rooms in Live Cam technology all over Western Europe. Interesting games can be found in Italy, Spain, Great Britain, Portugal or Malta. It is definitely worth to ‘visit’ Algarve in Portugal, where in Escape One you can play in an old, abandoned laboratory from the beginning of the 20th century, explore abandoned Atlantis or take part in ‘There's Something About Linda’ games, which allow for even 40-players in 5-person subgroups.

On the Mediterranean island of Malta, an island state that belonged to Britain until 1964, you can go to a pub that turns out to be a psychopath's trap for overly gullible tourists. Speaking of Great Britain, Live Cam escape rooms can be found, for example, in Manchester - the city where vegetarianism was born, the atom was split for the first time and which the Romans called the ‘Hill of Breasts’. Under these interesting circumstances, take a ‘ghost tour’ through two complementary storylines: The Exorcist and The Beast.

In fact, what not to choose - European rooms offer really high quality and very diverse scenarios interweaving adventure plots, horror, local plots and continental history with pop culture themes. Combine this with the phenomenon of the Live Cam solution, which took only 8 months to become a permanent trend in the escape room industry, and you can count on excellent entertainment.

- Live Cam Escape rooms turned out to be a real phenomenon. Just like traditional escape rooms, they have already created a whole community around them. The beginnings of this solution, when the owner simply grabbed the phone and with a shaky hand led the team, who had to strain to see and hear anything, are quickly gone. If that's how you imagine it - you'll be pleasantly surprised in the vast majority of cases" - says Katie Bodsworth of Escape One Algarve in Portugal. - Live Cam has allowed us to play games we would never normally play and together with people we would never otherwise meet. Well done Live Cam room is the next stage of escape room games. The system has been developed with the digital realm in mind and therefore allows you to achieve things that are hard to get in a traditional room.

More about the Live Cam escape room offer you can find on Lockme website.
 

Jakub Witosławski

Jakub Witosławski

PR expert

15 years of Public Relations experience. Worked for brands such as Allegro, Microsoft, Lock.me, Global e-Mobility Forum, Martin Kaczmarski, Rochstar TV Production. Communication manager of the team participating in the Cross Country FIA World Cup and in the FIA World Rallycross Championship. Organized events around TV series premieres, was responsible for the media coverage of skydiving events and records. Works for the escape room industry since 2017. Hobby? In a free time skydiver, enduro biker, freeride skier and party animal.

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