Escape rooms as reality adventure games
Escape room games have been very popular since few years.
You can read right here a whole article about the phenomenon of escape rooms in the United States. The trend of “urban gaming” is growing worldwide and you can find few escape rooms in Asia and in Ho Chi Minh City.
However, as the article explains, “the room is not the important part” and “not all escape rooms are about escaping a room”. The real concept of this activity is a “collaborative adventure” allowing the players to be together following the same scenario & working on solving puzzles.
That’s why at Ubiquest, we decided few years ago, to design and offer residents & visitors the perfect “opposite” of an escape room game in Ho Chi Minh City… Or rather many people would still call it an “escape room ” except that the perspective is different. We can describe it as a merger of a self-guided walking tour and an escape room. It is in fact a reality adventure game in Chinatown. It’s called Urban Tales and we developed the concept in Vietnam and in Cambodia.
Launched in late 2014 in Saigon, this interactive experience allows the visitors to dive into the thick ambiance of Cholon (Saigon’s Chinatown) . They start by a crime scene and then get ouf of the room to find out the clues and solve the case. In a way, all starts in a room but you don’t have to escape from it. Instead, you are “thrown” in the streets of Saigon in order to gather information to understand the reason of what happened in the crime scene room. This real-size investigation is of course a pretext to explore the neighbourhoods and its best-kept secrets.
To progress in the story, players will meet and interact with locals and among them will be local actors … This is a great experience, especially because you don’t know who is acting and who is just a real shopkeeper… Finally you will find out who is the murderer and by this you will have visited many places you would never have explored on your own. That’s the icing on the cake!
Our Urban Tales tour is very much appreciated by escape room game lovers as well as visitors who want to be independent and autonomous during their exploration of Saigon. It is a great activity as well for a team building half day out.
So if you like escape rooms or if you are interested in exploring the city in a very active and stimulating way, don’t look any further : this unique and immersive experience in Cholon (Saigon’s Chinatown) is for you and will wake you up!
You can find more information about this reality adventure experience right here.
