Here I am in a small class room of St.Paul’s High School, a site of an escape game.  There are just 60 minutes left and we need to diffuse the ticking bomb from exploding. Luckily the children and staff from the school have been evacuated. I and my team are under tremendous pressure as the time is ticking away.

This is Clue Hunt, an interactive locked room mystery game, also popularly known as escape game. These games were first created by a group of system programmers of Silicon valley in 2006. The plots of these games were based on stories by Agatha Christie. A year later they SCARP Co started these games in Japan and they became very popular. Today many countries have these games based on solving different mysteries.

We get into this small classroom with few tables and chairs, shelf, backboard and charts and school bags. There is a small speaker and a tv screen notifying time on the top corner of the room. We are a team of 6, feeling a bit wary, but poised and excited as the attendant went through all the rules of the game. He said we have to crack codes, unravel riddles and clues to diffuse bomb and come out of the room safe in 60 minutes. A sign of relief was that he promised us he will give us some hints whenever he finds it necessary…. The attendant mentions that fastest time it’s ever been solved is in 53 minutes and our team must try and beat this time.

We got busy searching for codes, unlocking locks, doing some simple arithmetic, discovering keys and collecting puzzle pieces as we moved through solving our mystery. We thought we were doing pretty well until we realize only few minutes left as were running between rooms putting together last pieces of puzzle. The clock was ticking away as put in the code to diffuse bomb and

We have solved the mystery!!!!

I have to admit it was the fastest hour of my life!!!!