Mr. Mystery: Huang Weiyu, Escape Room Gamemaker

We never saw the man who locked us in his escape room game – he had communicated with us over the phone. The game itself was chaos – only afterwards did we have the presence of mind to appreciate his fiendishly tricky puzzles. “He’s like our personal Moriarty,” we agreed. Who was this evil genius of a gamemaker? We dialed him up again to find out.

Describe your first online escape-room experience.
I think there were 13 objects in total, but I only found nine. I took a look at the walkthrough but I still couldn’t get out, and then I closed the page. I’ve never successfully escaped from an online game. My real-life escape rooms are meant for those who didn’t succeed in online games. Maybe they’ll have better luck in real life.

What do you wish you could add to the game that is impossible in real-life?
The scary, creepy mood in online games. I still haven’t been able to achieve that yet – I’m just trying to copy it as much as I can.

Have you yourself ever escaped from a real-life escape room?
I attempted one, just to see what the competitors are doing. I didn’t manage to get out.

How long does it take you to design a room?
One week. There’s no testing, just creative ideas.

Have you ever tried a real-life escape room?
Yes, just to see what the competitors are doing. I didn’t manage to get out.

Is it harder to create or solve an escape room?
Design is much harder. All designs need to be corrected at least 20 times.

Have you ever made a puzzle too hard – or forgotten a vital clue?
No, the success rate is 10% so far.

Who is your favorite detective?
Sherlock Holmes. I like the way he thinks about solving crime.

Are you good at chess?
Don’t like it.

What hobbies and interests do you have?
Nothing, I’m boring.

What does your family think about your occupation?
The older generation doesn’t know what this game is. They still think I opened an arcade.

Do you get many foreigners?
A lot … about 10 percent of the total.

What’s the fastest that any team has managed to solve your puzzle?
The fastest group got out of the room in 15 minutes.

Will you ever do this in English? Or without any language barrier?
The best I can do is bilingual. No language involved would be very hard to make.

How do you get the locations?
Before we didn’t even have a standard, our first location was at Sanlitun, but we have to shut down because of breaking the quiet enjoyment of our neighbors. So we figured that setting locations in residential buildings is not good. At the very least the room must fit five people and also have easy public transit access.

How many locations do you have?
Two in Beijing and one each in Dalian, Chengdu, Wuhan and Tianjin. In September, I’m also opening a place in Beijing with more than 1,000 square feet. It will be very similar to the online games in terms of environment and conditions.

What is your ambition with this?
I’m very confident about this. It’s the trend right now, the most popular. [In the new place] we will have the real life Mario brothers, all kinds of real games, not just escape.

To register for one of his escape games, go to www.oumyga.com.

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Photo: iwatchstuff.com