World Escape Room Championship, for the second time!
Over the past 10 years, Poland has been hosting the World Escape Room Championship, organized by Lock me. Initially, the concept started as the Polish Championship and later evolved into a World Championship, as participants from all countries could compete for the title.
The championship goes through several stages:
- Online Qualifications: These are point-and-click games announced months in advance on the World Championship website. Teams can try to solve these qualifications, and the results are compared with other teams. You can find qualifications from previous games and try to solve them. The games are enjoyable and logical; I highly recommend trying them. To participate in the qualification, you need to register and form a team.
- Stress Tests for Qualifications: Held on a specified day and time, these tests provide teams with another opportunity to familiarize themselves with the competition format and be more comfortable during the qualifications themselves.
- Qualification Rounds: Teams form a maximum of 4 people and a minimum of two. The ten fastest teams from the online qualifications earn slots for the finals. Unlike Red Bull’s World Championship, here, everything is self-funded, including travel and accommodations. In 2023, there were two teams from the USA, two from Japan, France, Poland…
- Finals: The qualified teams gather for the finals, where they are isolated from the outside world, including the digital one. The order in which teams face two challenges is randomly determined. Each team has 20 minutes for each challenge. In 2023, these were The Cube and The Globe. Unfortunately, the challenges were tough in 2023, and none of the teams defeated The Cube and The Globe was conquered by only two teams.
- Final Ranking: In case an insufficient number of teams complete the finals, the final ranking is determined based on the ranking from the online qualifications.
For the first time in the history of the World Championship, the finals were held in Wrocław, Poland (a beautiful city), and the audience was allowed in. To our delight, this year, they allowed an audience of 100 people, among whom we were included. The organization was remarkable, and we spent the whole day at Hydropolis, an absolutely impressive water museum. Throughout the day, various games and team challenges were organized for the audience, with live streaming of the teams attempting to overcome challenges, and there were hosts facilitating the events. We witnessed the chief game designer almost having a heart attack as no one could defeat The Cube. I sympathize with him; if only they had given each team 25 minutes instead of 20…
In the evening, there was a party at the museum to which we were invited. Not only could we play the challenges, but we also had half the night to explore the museum. It felt like being in a movie, wandering through the empty halls of the museum at night—a fantastic feeling. We got to know the organizers and other teams, had an epic time, and are confident that we won’t miss the qualifications in 2024.
Riddler Sukiyaki from Japan 🇯🇵 won the 2023 championship by finishing the second challenge, The Globe, in 15 minutes.
P.S. Of course we did 10 rooms in Wrocław, we are talking about Fury in the end 🤭
