Escaping Changsha (part 1)

I played eight escape games (…or were they?) on a recent trip to Changsha, getting a fascinating glimpse of the current industry in China.

A spectrum of experiences

There’s a growing distinction between traditional escape rooms (密室逃脱, ‘locked-room escape’) and the immersive theatrical experiences (沉浸剧) that have evolved from the former.

On the far end of the spectrum are immersive experiences with zero formal puzzle-solving, where players are essentially led through an adventure (often horror-flavoured) by actors (known as NPCs, borrowing from gaming terminology). What differentiates these from mere haunted houses, in my opinion, are the central narrative mysteries that players unravel along the way.

Notably, even the four puzzle-focused rooms I played had a high degree of puzzle-narrative integration, with most puzzles/tasks being diegetic.

The games ranged from 75 minutes to 150 minutes, with the puzzle-heavy rooms having longer runtimes.

Part 1: Puzzle-focused rooms

A sign of how the industry has evolved is that booking apps have a “puzzle-solving” (解谜) tag — implying that some games aren’t about puzzles.

I can’t imagine a similar distinction in the English-speaking scene, which still seems puzzle-centric. But there’s a parallel in China’s jubensha industry, which is no longer just about murder mysteries: some cases have 推理 (case analysis) or 还原 (story reconstruction) tags, and some don’t, because the focus really isn’t on mystery-solving.

Perhaps “jubensha” has become a catch-all term for a style of role-playing, just as 密室 now covers a wide range of physical immersive experiences.

脑洞先生

The three games played here were wildly different in style, but all featured satisfying, narrative-driven puzzle-solving; ingenious game structures; and interesting use of tech. There’s often a clever use of the narrative to move players around the physical space and set up certain conditions for the story to progress (e.g. players overhearing “characters” in the next room).

老板来了 (120 minutes)
One of the winners at EGA 2021 (national awards for China’s escape game industry), this entertaining room made clever use of diegetic puzzles and tasks, within a humorous and #relatable office setting. I appreciated how you needed a solid understanding of the story to proceed (in contrast to rooms where you can just pick out puzzle-relevant stuff from narrative fluff).

侦探游戏 (150 minutes)
An EGA 2018 winner, this unconventional narrative-powered game ran mostly on murder mystery logic (motives, alibis, evidence) rather than escape room logic (abstract codes and puzzles). Requiring players to make intuitive leaps and draw their own connections, it culminated in a real test of how well the central mystery had been understood. A cool mechanism allowed interactivity even without live actors.

超时空任务 (100 minutes)
This whimsical, heartwarming time-travel game skewed towards narrative-driven tasks rather than puzzles, rewarding attention to in-universe story details. The framing storyline powered some magical game transitions and clever surprises. Highly enjoyable, if not as game-changing as the other two.

问号先生

We only had time for one game here, but perhaps that was just as well…

失踪者 (90 minutes)
Perhaps the most conventional of the rooms we played, this asylum-based game felt a little dated and less polished. But the diegetic gameplay was interesting; it rewarded in-character (not just in-narrative) thinking, which feels quite rare in escape rooms. The comprehensive debrief elevated the experience in retrospect (all the clever details were there, we just didn’t pay attention to them…).