You may have heard of these unique games where people run around in real life, as opposed to virtual life, and try to solve puzzles to escape. They’re called “Real Escape” games, and they’re quite the rage in Japan. They’ve even had Shonen Jump–themed events, including ones from Assassination Classroom and One Piece! 

The Real Escape phenomenon has started to take off in America, and TEAM JUMP, being the curious bunch of monkeys we are, decided to check one out. We tried to escape from AT&T Park! Did we make it? Read on to find out! 

To escape a Real Escape game, you have to scour the area you’re in for a variety of clues and use them to decipher a game map that has corresponding puzzles. For instance, the first puzzle, which was by far the easiest, was just a matter of finding different signs and entering letters into circles to figure out a word. That gained us access to the field. That’s when things got hard…

The next set of puzzles were much harder and required some real brain work. A combination of devious word puzzles, ciphers, secret codes and other things taxed our mental facilities. One of our groups got through this part and moved on to the next section, which was even trickier!
But…none of us escaped! Luckily, a good chunk of people did, thus diverting the incoming monster from destroying AT&T Park. Baseball season is still on! 

Overall, it was a great experience. The energy from crowds of people running around trying to solve the puzzles was contagious. And it would be even more fun if it was related to a Weekly Shonen Jump property. If you get a chance to go to one of these events near you, take it! And take some smart friends with you!

To learn more about Real Escape games, go to realescapegame.com! 

And check out this video!