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…With a Zombie

A cartoon of a running zombie

…With a Zombie

 

 – By Dave Cooperstein, senior creative designer

 

Recently, I had the opportunity to test out my Top Ten Tips for Escaping a Room.

The good news: my advice paid off. For the first time in my short Room Escape career, I was part of a team that SUCCESSFULLY escaped a locked room, without any instructions, in under 60 minutes!

The bad news: they were some of the most intense, heart-pounding, adrenaline-fueled, sweat-producing 60 minutes of my life.

Why, you may ask, if our team followed all of my tips, would the tension in the room have been so high? Did I mention: there was a Zombie in the room with us? Her chain getting longer by the foot every 5 minutes? And, if touched by said undead, you had to stand, shame stricken and immobile, along a wall to the side? That’s why.

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So, yes, we knew about the Zombie when we signed up to get locked up. And, yes, we escaped. But, no, NONE of our teammates got ‘eaten’! When the door unlocked, all 10 of us ran, like a line of frantic lemmings, out of the room to safety as fast as we could. With, by the way, FOUR minutes to spare.

So now, in case you too decide to put yourself in such a precarious situation, I have

5 Extra Tips for Escaping a Room…With a Zombie:

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5) BE READY. AT ALL TIMES.

It sounds simple, but the shock of a bloodcurdling scream, a door flying open, and a chained-up Zombie flinging herself through the air towards you is always a surprise. If you’re not ready for it, you’ll be eaten. This isn’t a ‘Walking Dead’ Zombie, aimlessly wandering the room at a snail’s pace, until she smells something edible. No. This is a ’28 Days Later’ Zombie, scurrying across the floor at lightning speed, and leaping at your feat like an undead Jason Pierre-Paul trying to sack an apocalyptic Tom Brady. Never has a spawn of the afterlife been SO nimble, clever and crafty. Keep one eye on her at all times, and be ready to dodge. Be ready to jump. Be ready to move.

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4) DON’T BE SHY

There will come a point, as the Zombie is hurtling towards you with Reed Richards-esque agility, when you’ll find yourself leaping in the opposite direction, only to discover one of your teammates didn’t pay attention to Tip #5 (above). You will inevitable land on top of, get pinned against, or be held by this person. So if you enter the room with strangers, don’t plan on being strangers for too long. (Which also reaffirms my original Tip #9)

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3) DIVIDE TO SUCCEED. UNITE TO CONQUER. 

There are 10 of you, and only one Zombie. Use that to your advantage. Split up, while maintaining your distance, and focus on separate puzzles. While she’s drooling over him in that corner, you look for clues in this corner. And leave your clues behind so, when she switches her focus towards your uneaten flesh, someone else can pick up where you left off. You’re not getting out of here by yourself. So tackle the puzzles separately, and put your heads together when you can. As any Zombie already knows…Ten brains are better than one.

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2) DON’T OVERTHINK IT

The most difficult thing about this variation of the Room Escape challenge is not that the puzzles are harder, or more complex, or trickier. It’s your lack of ability to stay focused. That Zombie is doing everything she can to distract you, and eat your brain. So you need to work quickly, and stay focused for as long as you can. But, as we’ve all heard before, the simplest solution is often the best solution. So don’t twist your head in knots to find the answer. You’re not going to have to solve Hilbert’s sixteenth problem. Just remember to KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Solve enough of the pieces, and they start to fit themselves together.

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1) YOU MIGHT BE WRONG. AND THAT’S OK.

In our successful escape from the clutches of Zombie peril, I lost track of the number of times we guessed wrong, tried the wrong combination, looked in the wrong place, opened the wrong drawer, flipped the wrong switch, and were just plain wrong. We even made it all the way through every puzzle, and had the final lock combination wrong. But we stopped, reevaluated, rethought, and reworked our clues. And then we put everything back together careful. We were smart enough to know we were wrong, clever enough to figure out where we went wrong, and humble enough not to care who messed it up. And, ultimately, we cracked the code. Much to the drooling chagrin of our Zombie friend, now just inches from our feet.  Which, as the door swung open, made our escape an even more thrilling feat.

ONE FINAL OBSERVATION

So now you have 15…not just 10…tips to help you escape. Not just from a locked room, with or without a Zombie, but from any myriad of problems you may encounter. They are tips that I’ve found handy to solving complex design problems, conflicts with co-workers, and ways to approach the puzzle of everyday life. Will they apply in every situation? Of course not. But it certainly can’t hurt to keep them handy. Whether you’re with a Zombie, or not.

IMAGES COURTESY OF 2015 BUCKET LIST PRODUCTIONS, LLC, AND 123RF.COM.

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