Imagine someone locks you in a room with a couple of other people. You can’t leave unless you successfully solve the riddles. Doesn’t matter if you know the people or not, your mission is to get out of the room within the given timeframe. Once you’re inside, freedom is something you must earn. Naturally, you are physically safe, but your brain starts to work as if you were not. Your heart starts to race, your forehead sweats, and suddenly you become as sharp as you’ve never been before.
You need your logic and communication skills to discuss ideas and tactics with your team, and convince them that your idea is the best – just as you need these to thrive in life.
Well-designed escape rooms can easily deceive your mind and turn your deepest survival instincts on. Today we are here to discuss how escape rooms affect your brain.
Become more resilient
According to the American Psychological Association, “resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
Even though nothing can physically harm you, in escape rooms, your mind is constantly alert. In a way, you’re trapped, and as human beings, we’re naturally trying to break free. All in all, it’s a stressful situation for your brain, but not necessarily a bad one.
Psychologically speaking, it’s the same kind of stress that you feel when you go on a first date, travel to a country you’ve never been to before, or visit an amusement park: it inspires and motivates you. It helps you focus and enhances your abilities.
Think of it as a psychical exercise: the more you train, the more muscular you become. It’s the same with your mind: the more you put yourself into fabricated stressful situations, your mind can take its time to get used to it.
Before you can realize it, your brain starts to develop a strong mindset that you can perform well in highly stressful situations, solve any problems in life, and lead people toward the solution.
Improve brain health
Regularly visiting escape rooms can not just boost your memory and ability to pay attention to every detail, but it can enhance your problem-solving skills too.
By spending time in escape rooms you can say goodbye to not remembering things. To complete the next step, you need to use some of the information you gathered before. Completing the puzzles can easily help you boost your short-term memory.
Just like in life, being able to observe the happenings around you is a huge part of success. In escape rooms, your ability to perceive can decide whether you can beat the room. The Devil is in the details – they say…
As you won’t get any completion manual for escape rooms, you must find your way out and the part of your brain that’s responsible for problem-solving, couldn’t be any happier. You need to think outside the box and come up with creative ways to solve the puzzle.
The time limit, the specially-designed escape rooms, and their puzzles work together to stimulate your brain’s use of the availability heuristic. The strategy is a mental shortcut. In using availability heuristics, your brain is forced to recall information, find solutions, and make decisions quickly.
Learn to work together
Most of the escape rooms are designed to entertain 2-8 people. At the American Escape Rooms, the average team size is 4 or 5 people. Meaning you’ll have to work together with people, as a team.
As you’re not the only one calling the shots during a game, you must learn to appropriately communicate your thoughts with your teammates and develop a strategy with them.
It’s truly essential, because either you all get out and win, or you all lose. Usually, there’s nothing in between. Working together is essential in every realm of human endeavor, and escape games are a great way to learn that.
To win, you must collaborate, communicate, make decisions and solve problems together, effectively – in a high-stakes situation, on time. It’s a truly fun way to learn those skills and apply them in real-life situations, such as work.
Summary
As you see, playing escape rooms is not just fun, but a mentally developing activity too.
American Escape Rooms aim to create not just fun, but psychologically intriguing games as well. It’s a great way to spend quality time with friends, family, and colleagues, and prepare your mind for the challenges of the real world.
Real-life puzzle games can significantly improve your resilience, your brain health, and your ability to work together with people. And on top of everything, it’s a truly entertaining activity, making you feel better and putting you in a good mood almost immediately.