D.H. Hill Library is a popular area for students looking to study, play games, meet up with friends and so much more. Despite the huge amount of traffic the building gets, few students have used all that the library has to offer to its full potential. However, the new escape room set up in the library by staff members sets out to fix that.
The NCSU Libraries Escape Room is set in room 2141 of D. H. Hill by David Tully and Justin Haynes, both of whom are university library technicians at D. H. Hill. In it, five students are locked inside of the room and must cooperate with each other to solve a series of puzzles and escape before the timer runs out.
Tully and Haynes are both avid lovers of escape rooms and the technology NC State has to offer. When Tully came to Haynes earlier in the semester with the idea to incorporate both, it was only natural for him to follow through with it.
“A student in the Makerspace made a Morse code machine and I thought it was pretty cool,” Haynes said. “I took it to [Tully] and was like, ‘You’ve got to check this out. It’s really cool.’ And he was like, ‘That’s awesome. By the way, I was thinking about doing this escape room.’ I was sold right then.”
Most commercial escape rooms have a theme they model all of their puzzles after. For Tully and Haynes, their theme is the equipment available in D.H. Hill, and each of the puzzles they created showcase some of their applications, including the 3D printer, Oculus Rift VR headsets and the aforementioned Morse code machine although it is no longer part of the room.
“It’d be very easy for us to just make a cool escape room,” Haynes said, “but that wouldn’t do anything for our students.”
To ensure its quality, the escape room went through numerous tests from staff members and employees for commercial escape rooms. Each puzzle had multiple iterations throughout their development to make sure that they were passable without being too easy or difficult. After each session, every puzzle is adapted slightly so that past participants can still enjoy new experiences within the room.
Up to five students and staff members can register for a single session in the escape room, and reservations open up to two weeks in advance with four rooms running per week. Groups can either be random, or people can sign up for the same session with their friends.
“Students’ plans change and we have a limited number of people that can do it each time,” Tully said. “If we release them too far in advance and something happens that means you don’t show, then somebody who might want to do it doesn’t get the opportunity to attend. So we release them every two weeks in advance to make sure we get people that can actually do the escape room.”
Tully and Haynes plan to run the escape room over the course of the fall and spring semesters. If it garners enough traffic, they plan to look into more escape room installations of various difficulties across campus, including some at Hunt Library.
“We’ve had interest from campus organizations and departments that want to do it as a team-building exercise,” Tully said. “If we get enough staff for more rooms, we might even look at using it for first-year orientation in the future.”
With the increasing popularity of the room and new technology available on campus, the possibilities of escape rooms on campus are seemingly endless. Tully and Haynes even mentioned developing a mobile version for classrooms far in the future.
The escape room in D.H. Hill Library is free to all participants. While two sessions this week on Oct. 11th are full, more sessions are available next week. For more information about the room and register, visit its page on the library’s website, found here.
Escape Room in D.H. Hill Library Room 2141 is an immersive game where a group works together to solve puzzles and escape before time runs out. Participants get to use various technologies and skills to find clues that will lead to your escape. The escape room is open Mondays and Thursdays at 5:30 and 7:15.
