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This is the first post from the team at 5 Quests, new escape room, Dublin. We are all very excited to have the opportunity to bring our real-life immersive escape games to South Dublin. You may not be familiar with these type of escape games and we’d love to tell you more about them.

Even in well-established markets, like Eastern Europe, awareness of what immersive, real-life escape games are, is at about fifteen percent of the total population. This is mainly because real-life games were initially brought to the market for computer gamers and the selection of themes was a clear reflection of that. In recent years, games with a wider variety of themes more appealing to the broader public began to emerge. Escape rooms are now a rapidly growing type of leisure activity all around the world with over 200 new venues opened in the U.K. alone in 2016. Ireland will hopefully be catching up soon to offer the choice and the quality as we are seeing in many other countries.

Escape Boats Dublin has recently come to the market and offers the immersive experience at its best. It’s a ‘must’ for any escape games enthusiast. We at 5 Quests opened on the same week and are very proud to be a part of the Irish Escape Room community among many other excellent venues and locations around the country.

The purpose of this post is really to tell you more about how exciting this industry is and to offer you some of the examples around the world which have inspired us. Escape games are believed to have started with REAL ESCAPE GAME™ from Japan in 2007. Here’s a very nice short video explaining what the games are 



The market developed further and became popular in Asia with The South China Morning Post once describing escape rooms as a hit among “highly stressed students and overworked young professionals.” Even Disney has ventured into the world of escape rooms.
The CBS2 This Morning Team tries to ‘Escape The Room’ back in 2015 and describe the experience really well in their short eight minute video



There is no end to the themes (just about as many as the number of books ever written or movies produced or for as long as our human imagination can allow) and levels of difficulty you might encounter in escape games now. Many games are exploring ways of making rooms more and more immersive and adding real actors is an exciting development on this front.

Here at 5 Quests we personally get inspiration from, and admire the work of 5-Wits and New-York based, Paradiso which takes you to a whole new level of immersive experience and definitely the next level up from your average escape room. Something to try once you become an expert and play all the escape games available on the Irish market. Start local – there are many great rooms to try all around the country.

We at 5 Quests deeply believe that the games we create should give you a feeling of being totally immersed into a story. For us 5 Quests means a journey or a quest where you get to use all of your five senses. Welcome to a land of adventure, relax, get ready to use your brain but don’t forget to use your imagination and whatever you do, HAVE FUN!

Hopefully now you have a better idea of what real-life escape games are and are inspired to try them out. It’s a new way of spending your leisure time, a great alternative to a night at the cinema or any other rainy day activity. You can spend a truly amazing time with your friends being immersed into a theme and having to work out where the story line will lead you or how it will all end. It is really like playing a board game in your living room only better on so many levels considering you are physically right in the middle of a story, and solving puzzles and clues makes you feel like the hero in your own movie. Pick a theme that is of interest to you, find where you can play (there’s a great list of Dublin escape rooms and other Irish locations over at Exit Games), get your friends together, plan dinner or drinks after your game and get ready for a great night out.

We do hope to see you at 5 Quests in our beautiful new space in Cornelscourt right between the N11 and M50 (click here for directions). Whether you are trying an escape room for the first time or accepting the challenge of beating our current record holders, we look forward to welcoming your group to 5 Quests.

If you are interested in finding out more about what is happening in the Escape Room industry in Ireland, we recommend you join the Escape Rooms Enthusiasts Ireland facebook group and share your thoughts, recommendations for new venues and just chat about what would you like to see more in escape games.

Thanks for reading…until next time.
From all of us at 5 Quests.