Escape room games, a new breed of urban adventure playgrounds in Budapest, combine puzzle-savvy test solving with trapped-in intrigue

by Anna J. Kutor

In the quest for a powerful life-enhancing experience, would you consider getting locked inside a basement rigged with an elaborate series of puzzles leading to freedom? If the
freak-out-calm-down-find-your-way-out scenario - the sort normally reserved for
Saw-like horror movies - tickles your curiosity, challenge you and your friends
to an enthralling room escape game the next time you’re in Budapest.

Set up beneath the beatnik Gondozo Garden ruin bar, ParaPark (literally Fear Park,
Vajdahunyad Street 4) beckons thrill-seekers with an intriguing
convergence of urban puzzle solving, mystery challenges and tactical
team-building activity. In each two-room vault, marked with names such as 113
Garzon, Experiment Number 5 and Passageway Number 9, a teams’ mission is to
unravel a series of clues, hidden messages and solve complex challenges before
the sixty-minute timer runs out.

“There’s a child-like draw to the clue-cracking detective work”, says Attila Gyurkovics, the trend-setting
mastermind behind the of the wildly successful ParaPark, whose background in
psychology and group dynamics helped create the unique obstacle course.
Out-of-the-box thinking and constant info-sharing between the 4-5 team members
adds to the odds of breaking out, he says, but even players who stay trapped
find themselves completely caught up in the moment, resulting in the europhic
‘flow’ feeling described by American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
“It’s the focused get-out-if-you-can rush that offers a lasting sense of
pleasure.”

Since its inception in 2011, ParaPark has not only mushroomed into a nation-wide chain of captivity rooms,
including two new foreigner-oriented courses set to launch in downtown Pest in
February, but also inspired a dozen similar operations throughout Budapest. For
those who prefer their thrills to include a high-tension narrative then
Szobafogsag (Szinyei Merse Street 15, +36 70628 3568) will
be an exciting alternative. In the ‘Murder Scene’ room,  a group of crime-scene investigators are
tasked with helping to save a girl from the hands of a serial killer, while in
the ‘Party Secretary Office’, a team of agents have to stop a planned
assassination attempt by collecting incriminating evidence against the
conspirators.

Panikszoba (Bajcsy Zsilinszky Street 2, +36 70 408 4686) takes all the
thriller-esque elements of room escape games – claustrophobic, off-kilter
setup, impressively crafty quizzes and puzzles, countdown timer – and
transports them to a reinforced concrete bunker near St. Stephen’s Basilica.
The result is a labyrinth of twisted reality which is simultaneous
invigorating, fascinating – and completely bad ass.