Alley Entrance is a escape room set in 1940s of Taiwan, where a group of kids attempts to investigate the family background behind one of the missing kids. I visited this escape room with my team during my internship and instantly fell in love with every single aspect of the game. Prior to entering the room, you are first blindfolded and asked to change into the uniform students wore during 1940s. Once you enter the room, it feels like you’re transported back in time. Everything–the music, buildings, languages–resembles that period of time. The staff, who was explaining the rules, completed transformed into an NPC of the game. Together, my team and I solve puzzles to unlock the narrative of the missing kid and to escape from the room.
The mechanics of the game–playing in one character and solve challenges together–create fun in fantasy, challenge, and fellowship. It requires collaboration and communication among teammates to solve challenges, since each person starts off with one small clue, and you can only solve the challenge by combining everyone’s clues. By being assigned different roles, each person can immerse themselves in that character and complete tasks unique to that character, fulfilling the fun of fantasy. The fun of narrative and discover arise during the middle of the game. Aside from the main tasks, there are side tasks the players could solve to unlock more details of the narratives. The escape room also contains physical artifacts the players could play with, discovering new rooms and setup as they advance through the story. Finally, the sense pleasure highlights the whole gaming experience, as it’s utterly different from the era we live in, allowing players to instantly step into the magic circle of the escape room.
