Our clock ticks down as the eight people locked in a room search for clues to help us escape. Muttering riddles under our breaths and trying combination after combination on locks as music swells up in the background, we know we only have an hour to make it out of the treasure room alive.

We ‘died,’ missing our one-hour time limit by just under a minute.

Although my group did not make it out of Lock Chicago Escape Rooms alive when I tried it earlier this summer, the experience was still a amazing. While being locked in a small room with several strangers, black lights, smoke machines and creepy music all while being watched by a small security camera on the ceiling may sound like someone’s recurring nightmare, it is all standard fare in escape rooms.

Escape rooms, a trend that started in Tokyo in 2008, are exploding across the Chicagoland area. With themes like “Locked in a Room with a Zombie,” “Jailbreak” and “Outbreak: Find the Cure,” the rooms are filled with clues to help struggling players find their way out. Some of these clues include hidden compartments, riddles, invisible ink and other mind-testing problems. Originally inspired by escape video games, room owners come up with new ideas and redesign their rooms several times a year to draw back veteran escapees.

These themed game rooms can vary in intensity. “Sunburn,” the name of the room we tried (and failed) in Lock Chicago, had a relatively simple plot: Steal the ancient treasure in the middle of the night before the sun made the room too hot to survive in. Other themes and storylines at other locations can be more complex and scary, with options varying from Al Capone’s Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929 to the nefarious H. H. Holmes’s World’s Fair Hotel—the Chicago home of America’s first psychopathic serial killer.

This doesn’t mean that the rooms are not for the faint of heart. Other rooms, such as Lock Chicago’s next attraction “Malfunction” (loosely similar to Matt Damon’s “The Martian”) are less terrifying, but still difficult to complete, making it open to adventurers of all ages.

When we had trouble in Lock Chicago, there was a staff member watching us through a security camera. He could help us or give us clues, but we only had a limited number of lifelines. These kept the game moving and interesting for the entire hour.

The rooms, however, are expensive. Lock Chicago costs $29.95 per person for one hour, and other Chicagoland games can be even more costly. Going with a group of people (most of the sites are recommended for four to eight people, with some rooms accommodating as many as 12) adds up quickly, but it is worth it.

The experience itself overall at Lock Chicago was entertaining, even if some of it did seem overtly unrealistic. Some clues were too easy (a note from a previous ‘explorer’ with a math problem on it), and others were almost impossible to complete without help (lining up laser pointers with mirrors to create a complex star design), but this is not to say it was not an entertaining experience. My only real worry is trying other rooms. I feel like they could get repetitive, with puzzles too similar to previous experiences, but other repeat patrons have yet to run into this problem.

Bottom line: Looking for a different way to spend a night out? Escape rooms, such as Lock Chicago offer a challenging hour’s worth of adrenaline and fun—for a price.

3.5 paws out of 5