Tallinn: Creative Adventures for the Mind(less), Estonia

26/05/2015 by Piia | Ticket to Adventures 15 Comments

A few weeks ago I spent a weekend in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Over the years I have visited the city a hundred times more or less and explored it fairly thoroughly. This time we wanted to experience something totally new and different. Something adventurous we had never done before. Something to challenge our brains and creativity. So we booked an appointment at Exit Room. Exit Room offers real life room escape games. In the game, teams of 2-4 players are locked up in a theme room with only one way to escape: you have to use your brains, by collecting items and identifying clues, to solve puzzles and riddles in order to escape from the room in a race against time. Out of four different theme rooms we chose the Bomb Room, which meant escaping from a psychopath’s room before the bomb set by him would explode. In advance we knew that the room would be full of technical duties and would require skills of MacGyver. I was totally excited and had millions of flashbacks as MacGyver was my favourite tv show as a child! We were also told that this particular room was the most demanding out of the four choices. Bring on the challenge!

Before entering the room we were given a short introduction to the game and asked to leave all personal belongings including watches, mobile phones, cameras etc. in a locked storage box in the lobby. It was time to enter the room. The staff members put black hoods over our heads so that we could see absolutely nothing. They walked us into the room and sat us down on chairs. They said nothing, just left the room and locked the door behind them. We were left in the room wondering what would happen next. It was up to us to figure out how to proceed. We took off the black hoods and saw that the room was criss-crossed by lots and lots of red laser rays. As soon as we moved from our chairs we naturally touched one of the laser rays and the stopwatch next to the bomb started ticking!  It meant that the game was on! We had 60 minutes to escape from the room.

Photo: Exit Room.

I am not going to tell you what puzzles and riddles we solved or left unsolved, however I can say that we used number, colour and morse codes to solve some of the clues and searched for other clues with uv-torches etc. We put together a huge world map puzzle and saw plenty of pictures of naked women. And at the end the final task was to play a game on an ipad.

I am not going to tell you more in detail what we did,  how and why. You have to experience it yourself! But I can tell you that it was a very interesting, intriguing and challenging experience in many aspects! You really need to use your wits, creativity as well as logical and critical thinking in order to escape. The game also calls for observation, teamwork and communication skills. It definitely enhances your ability to work under pressure as the clock is ticking. You surely get an adrenaline rush while fighting against the clock. My best advise for the game is to think outside the box. Big time! Different types of talents and individuals are needed to solve the puzzles. In my opinion, the more heterogeneous your team is the better you will succeed, and you should use each player’s strengths to accomplish the mutual goal. The game is for the mind only, so no physical strength, agility or courage is needed or allowed. There is nothing scary or dangerous. You really have to give it a try. It is such great fun! One question remains to be answered: Did we manage to exit the room before the bomb exploded? No, we did not. But we are still alive! We simply did not understand what was the purpose of the game on the ipad and how to play it. As a whole the game was very difficult and we would have not made it even that far without hints from the staff via a walkie-talkie. Statistics tell the truth: the game is very difficult as only 1 % of the players manage to exit the room without any hints from the staff. 30 % exit with hints from the staff. And the rest of us fail, just like we did. But nevertheless, we felt like winners as it was such an amazing experience!

Read more blog posts about Tallinn:

Medieval Tallinn Old Town in Winter

Bohemian Kalamaja – the ‘Soho’ of Tallinn

10 Things to See and Do in Tallinn’s Hipster District of Kalamaja

Tallinn Culture Kilometer – A Fascinating Walk Trough Rough Times

7 Places in Tallinn to Get into the Christmas Spirit