Pop-up escape room to launch downtown

WASHINGTON — A “pop-up” escape room set to open in Washington in September aims to pack an hour of phone-free fun into a single rented room.

Themed as a video rental store in the late ‘90s, owner JJ Johnson said The Video Store Pop-Up Escape Room was tentatively scheduled to open this month, giving groups of 2-4 friends a novel new activity just off the square.

“I think people get tired of the same old options, they’re always looking for a new challenge, new adventure,” Johnson said. “And this is an extremely unique, one-off experience … I’d love to see double dates, and church groups, and neighbors and families and birthday parties. Whoever is looking for something to do.”

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It’s not the first escape room he’s created.

Johnson used to make a living setting up mobile escape rooms at birthday parties and backyard barbecues. While those were restricted by lightweight, movable set pieces, he said the Video Store could afford a more authentic looking arrangement, with period-accurate props, shelving, and fake movie posters.

“You just pick a theme, especially a theme that transports you outside your normal day to day,” he said. “And I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always had the idea to do a video store … now, that is an ancient concept, that I think people would have a lot of fun with, whether through nostalgia because they remember being there, or because they’re 13 and never got a chance to use a VCR, and now they’ll have that chance.”

He said he was inspired by flash games — a now largely obsolete type of computer game played in a browser, without installing any program files.

The premise of an escape room is quite similar: guests arrive, step into an experience they can’t find anywhere else, and play it out. And once the game is done, they walk away with the experience, as if closing the tab in a browser window.

Approachability is key in designing the puzzles. Johnson said they were made for anyone ages 13 and up, but noted that any participant’s problem-solving skills would often go out the window, under the time pressure of the game.

“Their brains sort of turn to mush, in a fun way,” he said. “You could hand them a Sudoku puzzle or a 20-piece jigsaw puzzle, and it’s going to be, pretty much, just as hard. You don’t have to be too clever to design a puzzle for an escape room. What you have to do is, you can turn a simple puzzle into something memorable by making it period-themed.”

Johnson said it was also rewarding on the back end, facilitating games and watching people play. He’s excited to get back into the business.

“I just happened to see this rental on Facebook, and I thought, ‘Hey, it’s been a few years since I tried something like this, I’ll just reach out,’” he said. “It turns out, it’s kind of a right place, right time kind of thing, and I thought I’d take the risk.”

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The game isn’t intended as a permanent fixture on Washington’s square. The “pop-up” nature of the escape room, Johnson said, made it a limited-time experience, one that would stay running for “as long as [he] could afford to pay the rent for it.”

The temporary nature of the experience, like Johnson’s mobile escape rooms of the past, limits the business budget, somewhat.

He’s not worried about it. Johnson said the escape room required some buy-in from the participants. And once someone in the room decides to treat it like high-stakes adventure, they create their own immersion.

“I’ve done an escape room [about] finding the will of a dead oil baron, and it was in a strip mall in Coralville,” he said. “And the immersion factor there was a little bit lacking, and yet, we had so much fun, because the primary thing you’re thinking about is that you’re doing something with friends.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com