Solve the Mystery of Escape Rhode Island

A famous local artist has gone missing. Before the police could solve the mystery, several coworkers and I sequestered ourselves in her studio to take a crack at playing detective. With an hour on the clock and a series of puzzles, riddles and locked doors between us and victory, the puzzle-space at Escape Rhode Island (385 South Main Street, Providence. 572-3889) put our noodles to the ultimate test.

To over simplify it, imagine a living game of Clue. You and your friends work your way through a series of rooms, each containing a variety of brain-busters to be solved in order to move forward. Riddles, color-coded messages, number sequences, these are the types of obstacles you’ll encounter, and honestly those examples are as specific as I can get without giving anything away. Teamwork is essential as there are just too many puzzles to solve alone (don’t be a hero, Sherlock.) My group of four was pretty well suited to The Gallery, one of three games Escape Rhode Island currently offers (the rest of our coworkers were simultaneously working their way through The Study). Online they suggest that The Gallery is good for up to 10 participants, but for my money anything bigger than a group of five or six runs the risk of feeling like a case of too many cooks. The four of us each settled into our strengths quickly and struck a nice balance of working independently and coming together for the more difficult puzzles.

If the mere thought of being locked in a small room with nothing but your wits to get you out has you crippled by claustrophobic panic, don’t worry. The rooms are (generally) bright and roomy enough to not set off your fear of small spaces. You’re also able to get out by going backwards if you really need to (you didn’t think they could really trap you in there, did you?). Plus they’re watching you the entire time. Should they notice you getting really stumped, a monitor will display a hint, but here’s the trick – the hints are often only slightly less cryptic than the puzzles themselves and the monitor is back in the very first room. As you progress deeper into the game, running back to read your hint comes at the cost of precious seconds.

With just minutes left we unlocked the last door, returning to the Escape Rhode Island lobby where we had started. On a personal note, I suddenly felt like the countless hours I had spent playing PC point-and-click adventure games had been validated by my team’s performance. As a team, we were pumped to have solved the mystery, but more so to find that the only trace of our trash-talking coworkers were their frustrated cries and futile bickering behind the last locked door of The Study. To the victor goes the bragging rights.