Blending puzzles, storytelling, and immersive environments, escape rooms have become a global phenomenon since their debut in Japan in 2007. Inspired by point-and-click adventure games, the first real-life escape room was created by Takao Kato—and it didn’t take long for the idea to spread worldwide. Today, with around 2,000 escape room facilities in the United States alone, small business owners are putting their own creative spin on this interactive experience. The following five businesses stand out for how they foster teamwork, challenge the mind, and deliver a whole lot of fun.
Bust Out Escape Room
The Lindahl family played their first escape room in 2016 for their son's birthday. A few days later, they went on a road trip to Minnesota, where they introduced their extended family to the concept and played a few more rooms. On their way home, they stopped at escape rooms along the way, and by the time they were back home, they had the keys for a space to open their very own escape room experience.
Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Bust Out Escape Room has two locations in the heart of the city. Mr. and Mrs. Lindahl handle the construction and business aspects, respectively, while their kids, Melanie and Tyler, specialize in puzzle creation, programming, and management. The Lindahls have collectively experienced 400 escape rooms around the United States to use as models for their designs.
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Between the two locations, Bust Out Escape Room has seven rooms with challenges like helping a western outlaw, getting off of the moon, and saving the nation from World War III. There are a variety of genres and difficulty levels to choose from, as well as a recommended number of players for each room. All games are private, so puzzlers never play with strangers. Each game has one dedicated game master to supervise and provide clues.
Mystery Soup Escape Rooms
Formerly Lock and Clue Escape Rooms, new owners emerged in 2024 and renamed the enterprise Mystery Soup Escape Rooms. Honoring the past and embracing the future, Tina Deater and Curt Jackson made their debut by unveiling the previous owner's final room design, Space Pirates.
After hitting it off at an escape room enthusiast meetup, co-owning, and then selling their escape room in Florida, Tina and Curt hit the road to do some serious reconnaissance. Traveling in their RV to 46 states, the couple played 282 escape rooms in less than a year. Inspired and ready to bring their vision to life, the pair landed in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and took over an 8-year-old establishment.
This small business is part of the Hope Artiste Village, a renovated mill that is now a multipurpose building that houses professional offices, restaurants, shops, and residential spaces. Mystery Soup Escape Rooms is proud to be part of this community hub.
Husband and wife Steve and Debbie Adkins went on a family trip to Nashville, Tennessee, and wanted to spend quality time with their kids. Looking to do something out of the ordinary, they tried their first escape room. They found it was a great way to get their kids away from their phones and work as a team.
Adventures of Intrigue
After 15 years of hosting an ornate haunted house in Edwardsville, Illinois, Jim and Susan Seubert sought a more permanent fixture for their elaborate set designs. They found an old Cadillac dealership and converted it into Adventures of Intrigue.
Unlike conventional escape rooms, Adventures of Intrigue is more of an open game concept. With multiple storylines spanning the play space, participants experience free-wandering adventures in an immersive setting.
With high-quality props and set design, each room aims to transport visitors to another place. There are no walls separating each themed room, and there are also no time limits for solving the games. This is a great alternative for anyone with anxiety, claustrophobia, or mobility issues.
There are activities for all ages: Save the Queen, Secrets of the Pharaoh, Those Naughty Little Dragons, and more. One of the adventures, Murder at the Manor, entails finding clues in seven different rooms. Those clues are marked with a specific symbol that indicates which game they correspond with. This system of symbols allows all 12 adventures to run at once.
The Lost Escape Room
Husband and wife Steve and Debbie Adkins went on a family trip to Nashville, Tennessee, and wanted to spend quality time with their kids. Looking to do something out of the ordinary, they tried their first escape room. They found it was a great way to get their kids away from their phones and work as a team. The Adkinses wanted to offer this fun activity in their town, so they established The Lost Escape Room.
The Lost Escape Room has 13 rooms, but only a handful are active at any given time. Rooms rotate periodically to add variety or to align with a certain season or holiday.
Each game is custom made in the small business's shop or garage in Huntington, West Virginia. Some of the rooms include The Lost Queen, an Egyptian adventure; The Quest for the Last Dragon; and End of the Line, where players must escape a serial killer in the subway system.
Beat The Room
The Zillner family created a single escape room in Rocklin, California. A year later, Beat The Room opened a second location about an hour west in Vacaville. Longtime manager Noel Leckemby took over the small business in 2023, carrying on the mission of its predecessors.
The flagship location has seven rooms, including a spaceship recovery, outsmarting witches and warlocks, and searching for a miner’s hidden gold. The Vacaville location has four rooms, including a Krampus-themed nightmare and a pirate ship escape.
Beat the Room purposely designs its rooms not to invoke fear or fright — with the exception of the Krampus room. The small business can host up to 120 guests for private events.
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