Nobody wants to end up in prison, yet great escapes from penitentiaries have provided the basic premise of many an excellent film and series. You can live out that adrenaline-filled experience in a simulated environment in our Prison Trap room. Here sharp-eyed players try to take advantage of the hour while the guard is away from the block and break out before their sentence is up. Dexterity tasks dominate the game, and to escape successfully the prisoners have no choice but to cooperate, which makes it an excellent option for team building events. The tasks in the room draw mainly on your dexterity, and the difficulties caused by the handcuffs and the bars are only compounded by the fact that the prisoners depend on each other and can count on no one else. Excitement and tension grow as the time ticks by, which makes for a great experience for teams keen to escape. If you have always wanted to test your abilities in a situation like this, we made this room for you. The Prison Trap is one of our family-friendly rooms, so alongside groups of friends and team-building events we thoroughly recommend it to families too, if you want to try an exciting shared activity in an extreme setting.
The Magic World series is the Wizard Prison, which in terms of difficulty is among our easier rooms, even though the game time here too is 75 minutes. In the game, apprentice wizards must reach Azkaban — the wizards’ prison — through the Room of Requirement, familiar from the Harry Potter stories. There, as part of a rescue expedition, they have to help break out Sirius Black, the notorious wizard. The room is entirely child-friendly, although unlike our other two Magic World rooms we recommend it from the age of eight. Not because it is especially frightening, but because of the particular setting: one feature of the game is that the room isn’t fully lit, and the set grows brighter as you progress. You needn’t expect darkness even at the start, but smaller children may be startled if they aren’t prepared for the unusual conditions. Before the successful escape, the “liberating” team has many cells to open and many puzzles to solve. Along the way it matters that they are adept with spells too, and the mission is by no means free of dangers. Besides the clock, players must watch out for the Dementors, whose attacks nobody should take lightly. In Azkaban the Dementors are the ghostly magical creatures who guard the prisoners. It is worth knowing that the right spell offers protection against them — something you’ll learn during the game. We recommend this room primarily to families who want to come away with a great experience, and of course to lovers of the wizarding world and anyone not put off by a little challenge. But we are certain that the Wizard Prison provides excellent entertainment — thanks both to the variety of its puzzles and to its atmosphere — even to those who haven’t felt close to the wonderful world of wizards before.
In 2019 HBO’s excellent series Chernobyl won over the Időcsapda team as well. So much so that, as a tribute to it, we built a stand-alone room on a Chernobyl theme. The room’s puzzles fit the subject: players have to prevent a reactor accident — against the clock, of course, in a maximum of 60 minutes, so that the excitement and the players’ adrenaline are at their peak. In terms of tasks the technical line dominates: players get to know the interesting world of relays and fuses, and circuit diagrams and chemistry-related puzzles add colour to the game. The atmosphere is utterly captivating; some of the furnishings and decorative elements are equipment familiar from civil defence, with whose help players can fly back to the socialist world of the 1980s. That conjures an entirely authentic experience for those trying to escape the room. Our Chernobyl room belongs among our harder ones, but solving the puzzles requires no prior training or knowledge. The room can be thoroughly enjoyable for children too, so it can be a perfect choice for a great family outing.
The name of our room The Psychopathic Killer’s Trap already makes clear that this is a more horror-flavoured theme. According to the story, players are trapped in the Killer’s house, shut in with a bomb that will explode in 60 minutes. They have no idea where to look for it, so a series of cabinets and padlocks awaits opening. This is a classic, first-generation escape room with many different padlocks and mysteries — a great option for anyone who likes tense, exciting games. We recommend it primarily to those over 14, though the room is frightening only in its theme and you shouldn’t expect deliberate scares. Nobody need worry about being frightened during the game: this is first and foremost an escape room, not a haunted house where the emphasis is on scares rather than puzzles.
