Where did Escape Rooms come from??

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We get a lot of people asking…
“Where did escape rooms originate?”
“Who first thought of exit games?”

Well to answer your questions…

The worlds first escape room was designed by a man named Takao Kato in 2007 - founder of a company called SCRAP Entertainment, based in Japan. He saw a classmate playing an online game, in which she had to click around the room to find clues/objects to solve puzzles, in order to unlock the room’s door and proceed to the next level (I’m sure everyone is familiar with these games, such as the ‘100 doors’ series). Kato decided to try and bring this concept to life, so players could experience a live action, fully immersive version of these games. The company developed this idea into what would be called ‘Real Escape Games’ - which were temporary games only lasting a few weeks at a time

After this, between 2007 and 2011, various companies in Japan started setting up permanent escape rooms which players could visit at any time.
In 2011, the first escape room outside of Japan was opened in Budapest, Hungary by a company called Parapark. Who were soon followed by various countries joining in on the puzzle room phenomenon!

Other early room escape games include:
HintHunt Debrecen, Hungary – February 2012
Real Escape Game, USA – March 2012
HintHunt, UK – April 2012
Adventure Rooms Bern, Switzerland – November 2012
Exitgames Romania, Romania – 2012

Not forgetting Escape Rooms Scotland - October 2015! 😉

And now they are everywhere!

We hope you enjoyed this little piece of Escape Room history!
. kkk