I adore a good mystery whether it's a well-developed plot twist in the TV show I'm watching, a classic bit of Film Noir where the witty private eye manages to stumble into the solution, or a beautifully crafted novel by one of the greats. I love that slow build up of tension as the details of the crime are divulged and all of the puzzle pieces come together. Those occasional moments where you happen to pick up on the essential clue that lets you figure the mystery out for yourself. The final breakdowns that explains all the bits you missed and dissects the human psyche. Now I can't quite recall if my love of mysteries has always been around, I definitely remember Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Great Mouse Detective being favorites of mine growing up, but college was definitely the clincher. My favorite class throughout my four years at Pitt was definitely Detective Fiction. Sure I enjoyed my photography classes and watching the development of the movie industry, however I just loved reading and discussing the wide variety of interpretations there are of the detective. Luckily for me, my general love of mysteries and puzzles has paid off since a reasonable amount of the recent trends seem to focus on these elements.
Tonight's sticker is an advertisement for one of the many Escape Rooms that have popped up all over the city. For those that haven't been exposed to the concept, an Escape Room is a themed room that you get locked into for an hour with the goal of finding the many clues that will eventually let you get out before time runs out. It's a truly intriguing concept although I will admit that I was a bit skeptical when I first heard about them. I happened to be out of town when my group of friends discovered their first room, so I just saw the excited posts on Facebook about their experience. I had a fairly hard time wrapping my head around the concept of paying to have someone else lock you in a room, for an hour... for fun. But after a while my friends ended up getting me to my first room, Escape the Room's The Newsroom. Apparently this was not the best one to start with, as all of my friends profusely apologized afterwards for it. I personally was just baffled with what to do for most of it. Since everyone else had done so many other rooms before, they all had a vague idea of what needed to pushed or looked at so I did a lot of standing around. At this point I've added two more rooms to my repertoire, The Haunted Dollhouse and IQ Escape's Contagion. Admittedly it's been a bit of a mixed bag for me so far but I'm still intrigued by them. Now as far as I can remember, I don't think anyone I know has attempted Daring Escapes although I've generally lost track of who's done what at this point. Daring Escapes looks to be located in the Shadyside/ East Liberty area of the city, which kind of surprised me. Somehow I've managed to not realize that there was one located near me, well another one since the Dollhouse is over on Ellsworth. This company seems to only have two rooms for you to try, a zombie themed one and a cabin in the woods one. It looks like the zombie themed one is the bigger of the two, since it has more of a description on the site. I will admit it is a bit of a different concept, you're locked in a room with a zombie who will actually slowly gain more access to the room as its chain gets loosened every five minutes you stay in there. It also seems like the company specializes in doing large group events with the intent of team building. Unlike most of the rooms I've been to where they just give you a bit of a rundown on the items or clues that you may have overlooked, this company appears to analyze the group's performance and tell you how you could have actually done better. It certainly seems like a different way to work on a team's cohesion but I will admit that I'd be hesitant to try one of these without being good friends with the people in there. On the other hand it's not like I've gotten out of enough of these to actually have a solid opinion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Maggie Ondrey
An amateur photographer and writer capturing a small portion of the city. Archives
August 2017
Categories |