Escape from an Urban Legend looks to perfect the intriguing combination of scare houses and escape games.

On the surface, haunted houses and escape games are pretty similar. They both lock you into a high-tension fantasy realm designed to excite you as much as possible, However, their fundamental difference is the emotions that each aim to produce. Scare houses produce the thrill of fear, whereas escape games hope to provide the thrill of satisfaction that comes with unraveling a mystery.

So what if we were to merge the two into one form of entertainment? There have been similar attempts in the past, but they tended to be haunted houses with puzzle elements, or escape games with horror themes.

Then along came the collaborative efforts of scare house impresario Hirofumi Gomi and escape game organizers Scrap. Having worked together previously in 2015 on the Escape from the House of the Hidden Demon, they are now working again to fine tune the truly hybrid haunted escape game genre.

This new event is titled Escape from an Urban Legend and it revolves around a town in which all of the residents have gone missing. At the center of the disappearances is an old house nicknamed “the House of No Return” because anyone who enters it…well, you probably get the idea.

Participants will take on the roles of a special investigators unit called in by the police to find the reason for the mysterious disappearances. Apparently the authorities were stumped as to why anyone would install an air conditioner directly above a toilet and decided to call in the big guns.

As an investigator you must move around furniture and hunt for clues such as discarded journal entries like this one…

“It was not supposed to be like this. I only wanted my friends to have someone to talk to. A strange dark shadow follows. I tried many ways to stop it but nothing worked. This is how I will be killed.”

As you can see there are laughs-a-plenty to be had at Escape from an Urban Legend. But more importantly, it is an intriguing concept as way to quickly test one’s mettle. You may be able to act cool in a frightening situation, but you have to be undaunted through and through to solve complex puzzles in that same situation.

Likewise, you might fancy yourself a whiz with riddles and games, but are you quite as swift when unexpected horrors lurk in every corner of the room? Perhaps the only way to find out is to try to escape from this urban legend yourself starting 2 August at Agito of Scrap in Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood.

We’d send one of our field reporter’s to try it, but those wusses couldn’t even get through zombie camp without getting killed. What chance do they stand in the House of No Return?

Event information
Escape from an Urban Legend / ある都市伝説からの脱出
Agito of Scrap Asakusa 3F, Tokyo, Sumida Ward, Azumabashi 1-17-2
アジトオブスクラップ浅草3F, 東京都墨田区吾妻橋1-17-2
Four games on weekdays at 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., and 7 p.m.
Five games on weekends and holidays at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., and 7 pm.
All games have a 60 minute time limit.
Tickets: 3,500 yen in advance, 3,700 at the door
Group tickets for two to six people also available in advance for 18,000 yen
Tickets

Source: @Press, Scrap
Images: @Press
[ Read in Japanese ]