The rapid and certainly spectacular spread of the fame of escape rooms in America, in recent years, could not have gone unnoticed by the hounds of major television series production companies such as HBO, which has so far introduced worldwide great hits to fans of television series everywhere. Productions, therefore, such as Veep, Silicon Valley and Game of Thrones, which have been loved by as few as a few TV series junkies, were transferred in March 2017, for the needs of the South by Southwest film and music festival, in Texas, to specially designed spaces in which groups of players were locked up who were then invited to escape, having only 45 minutes at their disposal. The rooms communicated with each other in such a way that you could not move to the next one if you had not first unlocked the door of the previous one.
Of course, the best impressions of the audience were gathered by the themed room dedicated to Game of Thrones, which transported you to the frozen and snow-covered Castle Black, with such accuracy and detail that you felt like you would actually meet John Snow on horseback. What remains remarkable is the number of people who passed through these rooms in three days, which exceeded 1,500.
A few days later, the rooms traveled to UCLA, as part of another festival, UCLA Geek Week. Tickets may have sold out within hours, but those who weren't lucky enough to get in were content with a few selfies on the Game of Thrones-style Iron Throne, a faithful replica of the famous Iron Throne.
Of course, even before HBO decided to commercially exploit the potential of the escape room industry, some international television networks used the idea of room escape, designing interactive games in which live players attempted to escape one or more rooms and win significant cash prizes. The most popular TV shows that relied on this philosophy, even creating huge waiting lists for prospective participants, are “Fort Boyard” (a French television game show that was also presented in our country by Christos Ferentino in the period 2004-2008) and the popular, mainly among the British audience, “The Crystal Maze”. In particular, Fort Boyard, which began in France in 1990 – and continues to be shown there today – was set in an 18th-century castle, on a rocky island in the middle of the Atlantic, where five players went through tough and clever tests in order for one of them to win the cash prize. The game was shown in many different countries, from Greece, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Finland to the USA and Canada, and was a huge success in most of them. However, similar productions were also staged in China, Japan and Indonesia, albeit in different variations of the well-known game.
As for the legendary “The Crystal Maze”, it is by far the coolest adventure and escape game show that made its mark in Great Britain in the early 90’s, and which was recently announced to be returning with a new series to the British small screens. In our country, it arrived in the mid-90’s with the title “Crystal World”. It started, in fact, on the old SKAI and continued on STAR, bringing to our living rooms, on Saturday mornings, the inimitable Richard O’ Brien, the bald presenter with the characteristic spooky physiognomy.
The game, for the oldies to remember and for the new ones to learn, was as follows: Six players, three men, three women, went through various tests through four zones, corresponding to today's escape rooms, with the goal of collecting as many crystals as possible. These zones were: The Aztec zone, the Industrial zone, the Medieval zone and the Futuristic zone. At the end of each game, the participants entered a crystal dome and, depending on the crystals they had collected from each zone, they won the corresponding time to collect 100 golden cards and receive the grand prize.
The area used to set up the game was approximately the size of two football pitches, while the cost of the sets exceeded 200,000 British pounds. Of course, Channel 4 executives rubbed their hands with satisfaction every time they received the ratings. Over 6 million viewers tuned in to Crystal Maze each time, setting a record for viewing figures among British television games.
In our country, the game, due to its spectacular response from the public, was also released in a tabletop version by MB games. It may no longer be found in stores, but those who bought it back then and managed to save it from the ravages of time to this day have every reason to feel happy because they now hold in their hands a collector's item.