Challenge Attendees With a Virtual Escape Room
One of Paruzal Games' challenges asks competitors to get back to Bruce Springsteen's dressing room to say hello "before the journalist arrives in an hour and interrupts your plans."Escape rooms — in which a team of participants must piece together clues to solve a puzzle and get out of a locked room — have been a popular corporate activity for years. So how does this game translate to the virtual space? With surprising ease, it turns out. While specifics vary depending on the provider, in the Paruzal Games version, groups of three to 10 attendees gather on Zoom where a host introduces a scenario. People are asked to explore a graphic set of "rooms" to discover clues to help the group achieve the room's goal, "which, spoiler alert, isn't always about escaping," says James Warner, founder and CEO of the company.
"Most game scenarios center around exciting, but entirely feasible, real-world situations, whether you're securing pizza-making ingredients for your restaurant's grand-opening or sneaking backstage at a Bruce Springsteen concert. Good storylines feature the right mix of fun, team interaction and challenge," Warner adds. "Each player is encouraged to offer suggestions, supported in a safe space where the game's host assures them there are no 'wrong' approaches. What we see over and over again is coworkers surprising one another by demonstrating keen intuition and skills that aren't typically evidenced in a more formal corporate setting."