We Berliners are actually oversaturated with leisure activities. But the following still applies: more is needed! We very reluctantly leave our beautiful, old vintage couch for bowling, ice rinks, cinema etc. Alternatively, you can jump from high-rise buildings (base flying), take part in soapbox races, dine in restaurants where you sit on toilets, experience karaoke book or realize yourself in our numerous parks (Berlin is ugly, but very green) with sporting activities, spiritual mating dances and lots of art and nonsense. We from the allmaxx team have already been through all of this. Adrenaline, detox and unconventionality are our daily bread. And yet there is something new on the “must-do” list that made us drop our pens in the office at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday:
ESCAPE GAMES!
The first association with escape games is the sweet, little SAW doll: "My name is JigSaw and I want to play a game with you..." Room after room and round after round, puzzles have to be solved, teammates have to be sacrificed and one has to fight for one's own progress become. And that's exactly how escape games work - apart from the killing (in some cases "unfortunately"): You book a game with a specific motto and as a team you usually have 60 minutes to collect clues, evaluate evidence and solve the game .
Thomas, Chiara, Jakob, me, Saskia and Teresa, in a serpentine line from top left to bottom right
Escape Games: The preparation
After I had carefully put together our dream team for the afternoon escape game, we quickly decided on the detective game Sherlock Holmes. By the way, we are Thomas, Chiara, Jakob, Saskia, Teresa and yours truly. We were all complete escape game beginners; Everyone has heard of it and knows someone who knows someone who... But none of us have actually done it yet - all of us are escape game virgins.
Since I'm not the type of person who likes to lose, I wanted to do everything I could to solve the game in the allotted time and searched the Internet for clues and even solutions (yes, I'm a passionate cheater). After all, preparation is half the battle!
An important tip was that well-organized teamwork is very crucial. Great! I almost thought so, but at the same time my team selection made me a little worried: we are all (except for Thomas) egomaniacal, narcissistic chatterboxes of the "talk all day but have nothing to say" variety. The fear of failure grew.
The day had come: Can we do it within 60 minutes?
I would like to say this much in advance: There will be no solutions here either. Because we want to give away tickets to you!
Before we started, we received a detailed briefing with rules. Teams before us had probably already cut open sofas or moved antique oak furniture into other corners. And then it finally started... Locked in Sherlock's apartment searching for his whereabouts, the clock started ticking. The first overwhelming feeling took hold. Like frightened chickens, we looked for clues in every crack, hole and corner until, after initial difficulties, we warmed up and got from one room to the next more or less smoothly. What was interesting was that, above all, women dominated the game. The men's group had more of an eye for the rough stuff: finding a key, discovering a door or devising a light switch mechanism. A little anecdote on the side: I senselessly carried 68 potatoes from one room to the next and then counted them - much to the chagrin of the clean-up team, I assume. It didn't help. The girls, on the other hand, kept an eye for detail and put every little fragment of the puzzle together, giving us a way out of Sherlock's apartment 15 minutes before time was up. We were probably a very fast team. Mission complete!
Tips & Conclusion
With a few simple home remedies you can influence the successful completion of an escape game. After all, no one wants to expose themselves to losing.
- Know the strengths and weaknesses of your team: the stupid ones search, the organized ones join together, the alpha animals keep track
- Don't bother with nonsense: "Talk less, do more" also applies to escape games. There's no point in discussing things because time is running out
- Work together: With a group full of lone fighters, you lose sight of the bigger picture if everyone does their own thing
- Avoid nonsense: Tips and hints are not hidden under the corner strip of the laminate floor
- Women's quota: Take at least one woman into the team ;)
Competition: Win tickets for Berlin's largest live escape game
Because we enjoyed the escape game so much, our esteemed colleague Teresa stayed behind closed doors with the boss for a quarter of an hour longer to "negotiate" free tickets for you. Take part in our Facebook competition and win 2x 4 free tickets for Escape Berlin! Participation until January 8, 2017.
