Escape room trend finds itself in Fort Collins

The year is 1953 and the scientist, whose neatly-kept home you've stumbled into, has gone missing.

He worked for the university in town and was on the verge of a new discovery when he vanished. His living room is basic — lined with plants, pictures and shelved books. And you're locked inside.

Around the room are physical clues, hypothetical keys to solve the mystery and get you out before university officials come to steal his work.

Your goal? Find them. And, most importantly, escape

Can you crack the code?

OK so technically it's not 1953. It's 2015 and this "home of the mysterious missing scientist" is actually a former office space under The Drunken Monkey in Old Town.

The revamped space is now home to Enigma Fort Collins, an escape room experience that opened last weekend. The experience locks 10 people into the "missing scientist" room for 60 minutes. To start, participants are given one written clue. But, from there, they have to work together, race against the clock and find things in the room that might lead to their escape.

When you start, "all you know is there are books, there are plants, there's some weird elevator music," operations manager Kelly Eigenberger said from a back room in the space Saturday.

Eigenberger's looking at a split screen with a live video feed of what's going on behind the locked door. She uses the video to make sure the groups are safe and on task. If they hit a certain point and seem stuck, she'll slide another written clue under the door. But right now, she's watching as a group of ten high school students, there for a friend's 15th birthday, hustle. Their hour is almost up.

A new gaming trend

Escape rooms are scattered across the world, but didn't start in Colorado until Centennial's Clue Room opened in 2014, according to The Denver Post. Since then, the unusual, hands-on gaming trend has caught on. Mathew Sisson and Tommy West, who own Enigma Fort Collins, first started with their Enigma Boulder location late last year.

"We've been in Boulder since the end of November and we're still selling out every weekend," Eigenberger said, adding that most of the business's advertising has come from Facebook, a single post on Reddit and word of mouth.

Sisson said, like their Boulder location, Enigma Fort Collins will eventually have more than one escape experience. The second installment of the "missing scientist" theme will open eventually, followed by probably two other different themes.

"The one that we have premiering, that's part one of a series," Sisson said. "We'll also be building ones that don't relate to that plot."

The experience itself is different from most outings with friends. Each participant pays $26 and, unless they're part of a private party, can end up paired with strangers to solve the puzzle.

There's an underlying need to be a team, but also an edge of competition. And, like the teenagers in Enigma Fort Collins Saturday, their phones were locked up too. They sat outside in lockers while their owners spent a little less than an hour solving problems sans technology.

Unfortunately, though, they didn't crack the code in time. As the timer ticked to 50 minutes, Eigenberger opened the door to tell them their time was up and walk them through what clues they missed.

Of the four groups that had gone through the Fort Collins puzzle by Saturday, only one — "Team Turing" — made it out before the time was up and scrawled their time on a chalkboard in the lobby.

The record at Enigma Boulder is for a group of graduate students who got out in 27 minutes, Eigenberger said.

Once the time was up Saturday, Eigenberger and other employees popped into the room to rearrange everything back in its proper place. The room looked like it did when the teenagers first laid eyes on it and the game started all over again, as Enigma Fort Collins prepared for a new group to come in later that afternoon.

"It helps having a degree in art history," Eigenberger said with a laugh, straightening a picture on the wall. "This is my little museum."

Enigma Fort Collins

Where: 151 S. College Ave., Fort Collins

Tickets: $26 per person, maximum of 10 people

Website: www.enigmafortcollins.com