Watch: The "Think in a Box" is a Puzzle in Real Life

SAN ANGELO, TX — The art of the escape room is something many people are mastering these days. But what is it? Why is it popular? We visited Think-in-a-Box, San Angelo's only escape room, to find out.

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An "escape room" is a physical adventure in which players solve a series of puzzles and riddles using clues, hints, strategy, and teamwork to complete objectives.

Building and creating real-life escape rooms started in Asia and became popular to North America in the past eight years or so. There were many video games and interactive software games created early on with the same concept, but the idea to bring it to "real life" has taken off.

Players are given a set time limit to reveal the secret plot, which is hidden within rooms. Some escape rooms have expanded and added themes like a dungeon, a space station, a scene of a kidnapping, or a prison cell.

The puzzles that people might see in an escape room include: hidden objects, team communication, light, counting, noticing something obvious in the room, using something in an unusual way, symbol substitution with a key, searching for objects in images, assembly of a physical object, algebra and other mathematics, pattern identification, riddles, ciphers, and more.

Many people are signing up for these escape rooms to enhance team building skills and to challenge themselves in a life-like escape scenario.

In San Angelo, Think in a Box, 123 E. Concho Ave. in the former Western Mattress building, offers several live "escape rooms" each with a different puzzle for a team or family to solve. Their escape rooms offer immersive narratives that will let you live out the stories you usually only see on the screen, and they are adding new puzzles to solve weekly. Find our more about Think in a Box on their Facebook page.

In the photo above, Simmons and Friends stopped by to dig around in Old Bill’s Cabin for the gold at Think in a Box. They moved fast and talked to each other constantly. Excellent teamwork and communication paid off as the escaped with 13 minutes and six seconds with only three clues.