It’s a Wednesday afternoon, and I’m walking around in north Phoenix, looking for the entrance to a place called the Nemesis Club. I’ve been given an address, but it leads me to an ice cream shop called the Soda Jerk.
When I walk in, I find shimmering countertops, smiling employees, and smiling families enjoying elaborate sundaes and root beer floats. I approach the counter, where a Soda Jerk employee is standing in front of a large refrigerator door.
SAM DINGMAN: I’m looking for the entrance to the Nemesis Club?
KYLIE: You found it!
She opens the refrigerator door, and leads me into a series of dark, wood-paneled set of hallways, lit by low lamplight. Finally, we arrive in the lobby of the Nemesis Club, where a small group is waiting for us.
KYLIE: … Three of our eight players, so we’ve got a little bit of time.
SAM: OK! Hello, three of the eight players. Thank you guys so much for doing this. This is in the name of journalism! [LAUGHS]
The task we’re about to undertake in the name of journalism is an escape room — one of three operated by the Nemesis Club. The one we’re about to do is called “Mogollon Monster,” and it’s one of the top 100 escape rooms in the entire world, according to TERPECA.
RICH BRAGG: TERPECA stands for the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts Choice Awards.
That’s Rich Bragg, the founder of TERPECA. If anyone’s played enough escape rooms to qualify as an escape room enthusiast, it’s Rich.
RICH: I’m at about 1,300 overall now.
Some escape rooms, Rich says, are just a set of walls, a handful of themed puzzles, and a timer. But the best rooms — the rooms that appear on TERPECA’s top 100 — are much more immersive. They have full-blown sets, sound design and actors playing characters who would logically appear in the world of the game. For Rich, those are the elements that put the “escape” in “escape room.”
RICH: I like to think of an escape room as escaping reality, not escaping the actual room.
Back at the Nemesis Club, I meet the players I’ll be observing as they make their escape — the Ford family. It’s a group of brothers and sisters who look to be in their late 20s or early 30s, along with their parents, spouses, and friends. They may not quite be at Rich Bragg’s level, but this isn’t their first rodeo.
SAM: How many escape rooms would you say you’ve played?
DANIELLE: Oh, gosh, how many do you think?
VICTOR: Hi this is Victor, one of the friends. We’ve done, probably upward of 20 to 30 together, and then just on our own also. We’re all, I think, very seasoned.
LORI: This will be my third one just this week! [LAUGHS]
With the group fully assembled, a Nemesis Club employee in a ranger uniform approaches us.
EMMA: My name is Emma, I’m gonna be your counselor today. We are heading up to the Mogollon Rim to a campsite built by the Monster Rangers — that’s an organization that studies monsters.
Emma reaches towards what looks like painting on the wall, which turns out to be another secret door. She opens it, and we file into a tent full of camping gear — soup pots, fishing poles, and sleeping bags. Outside the tent, we hear the sounds of birds and wildlife.
When I asked Rich to describe some of his favorite escape room moments, he hesitated.
RICH: I don’t know if I can spoil anything — the surprise is the whole thing!
And as the Fords start exploring the makeshift campground, I realize that I’m standing in the middle of a mystery that the Nemesis Club has gone to great lengths to immerse me in. So while I can assure you the Fords had a great time, it feels wrong to give away the surprise.
Besides, the specifics of this particular escape room aren’t the real mystery. For me, the real question is personified by Emma, the Nemesis Club employee who plays the role of the camp counselor. After we finish the room, she tells me that she just got back from vacation, and that while she was gone, she used her free time to check out some other escape rooms.
SAM: It’s notable to me that you spend your work week in an escape room — and you play them in your free time.
EMMA [crosstalk]: It’s a lifestyle! … I just enjoy being taken out of reality.
So, if escape rooms are about escaping reality — what happens when escaping becomes reality? That’s another situation Rich has a lot of experience with.
RICH: I actually came from a community of puzzle games called “The Game.” It was kind of an underground community …
The Game, Rich explains, is a reference to a movie called “Midnight Madness,” released in 1980.
“Midnight Madness” tells the story of a grad student named Leon who designs this all-night puzzle game. The players are told to show up at a random location, where they get a mysterious clue. If they can figure out what the clue means, it leads them to a new location, where they get another clue.
So at some point, someone decided to make a real life version of the game from “Midnight Madness” — and that’s “The Game.” Rich started playing it when he was a student at Stanford. I ask him how it worked, and he says one time, he got a message that said, “show up at this train station.”
RICH: We were told to get on the train, and we didn’t know where the train was going. It took us like a hundred miles away or something.
When the players got off the train, there were vans waiting for them, which took them to a field, where each team was given a custom-built wand with LED lights and sensors.
RICH: It would sense the swishes and flicks that you were doing and if you translated it into wand language, and the wand would show you what to do next.
SAM: My jaw is on the floor. This rules!
The problem with “The Game” is that playing it was a huge commitment. You had to block out an entire weekend for it, and you didn’t know where it was going to take you.
RICH: That whole subculture has just kinda died out.
Rich is grateful that escape rooms came along to offer a different kind of exit ramp from ordinary life. But I think “The Game” and the Nemesis Club are examples of what can happen when escape becomes reality. They both get more interesting.
Towards the end of my afternoon at the Nemesis Club, I meet Kylie and Dustin, the co-owners.
SAM: So when I was talking to Rich, from TERPECA, he brought up this thing called “The Game.”
DUSTIN: Oh! I know “The Game.” … So we’ve never been invited to play the game. But we’ve had brushes with The Game.
SAM: Really? What do the brushes look like?
DUSTIN: I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it. … We had a couple groups come through, and by the way they were talking we could tell that they were connected with “The Game,” and somehow our venue had been connected with “The Game” for some period of time. And so, that’s really all we know. I know some of the antics that were going on, I know some of the rumors that were flying around. But honestly, I don’t know a lot more than that.
SAM: Really?
DUSTIN: Really! Do you?
SAM: So far you’re saying everything that I know about it. But it’s intriguing.
DUSTIN: It is intriguing.
