Takagism

Periodically, we have some team building events at work within teams.  They usually involve some sort of outing such as a movie, or doing something outdoors and followed by a dinner.  Since I am 'lucky' enough to work in three teams simulataneously I get to go to a lot of these.  

The most recent one involved something I had never heard of before as the event.  It was called 'Takagism'.  Takagism games - or escape-room games - started as an online gaming thing.  The character starts out in a room and has to escape that room and enter the next by solving some sort of puzzle or finding a clue.  There are multiple rooms you have to get through until you finally reach the end.  They can have all types of themes which make it new and interesting for the player.  In Beijing (i'm sure many other places too} they have real life Takagism places.  I've now been to two of them. 

The best one, took place in a Hutong (what's a hutong?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong )  

I went there with one of my teams, of which, I am the only english speaker and, of course, the hosts of the business and games are run in Chinese.  I didn't mind though, it looked interesting.  I got the low-down from my co-workers of how the game works.  They said they would try to help translate or describe the steps as we go so I didn't feel lost.  So, our team got split into two groups, each going into a seperate room with a separate theme and trying to be the first ones out.  

Entrance

Mission Briefing

Bulletproof Vests

As we entered our very small room, there were fake bulletproof vests and radiation signs everywhere.  The door shut behind us and an instruction video came on.  It told us that there were three nuclear bombs that had been stolen and we needed to retrieve and disarm them or they would be fired on an unknown country.  I was feeling pretty excited like I was in mission impossible.  

A garage door to our left opens and signals the start of the game.  First we have to walk through a laser field and can't touch the beams or it will set off an alarm.  All my much, much shorter teammates tried and failed so it came down to me having to dance my way through the laser field, but I got through.  I turned off the lasers and the team joins me in the next room...filled with guns, grandes and scattered bullets.  We found a number code among the scattered bullets which opened another door.  not too hard so far.  

Next room has 6 barrels with numbers written on the side.  There are also six circles on the floor, same size as the barrels with numbers on them.  We had to figure out the meaning and relationship of these numbers to access a safe.  We got 3 tries before the safe was locked out for good.  At this point, it got a bit crazy.  We tried twice and it didn't work so we had one chance left.  An alarm starts sounding to put some added pressure on us and the team was now yelling back and forth to eachother in Chinese, running around the room, trying to figure out a solution. I was honeslty starting to panic a bit here..it is not a comfortable situation for a foreigner!  I just wanted to hide in the corner.  

Well, finally we got through to the next room and we found two of the three nukes.  We had to crack another code to open a final room.  Once inside we found a box in the middle of the room with Radioactive signs all over it and a big, ominous red button.  One guy figures it's a good idea to press that button right away.  This sounded off another alarm and out of the box lifts the third nuke...armed and ready to fire.  So now the clock is ticking as the nuke will fire at any moment.  

I found one guy who had stepped away from the action and asked him for an update on what was going on.  He said the plan had changed and we had to hurry up and Nuke Japan!  ummm, I know there's some tensions between the two countries but is that really what we need to do to win the game?  Well, it turns out the nuke was poised to fire on Japan but we had to disarm it before it fired.  Good thing the guy I spoke with wasn't in charge.  

We solved the last puzzle, disarmed the nuke and escaped the room.  We all came out of the room a bit relieved but having had fun.  I think I was more relieved than the rest.  The team got me caught up on all the things 'we' did to solve the puzzles and, at the end of the game, i finally understood everything we had to do.  If we go back and it's the same theme, I've got it covered.