Escape rooms have their adherents. They’re usually folks looking for a way to unwind from the stresses of competitive pub quiz play. Some of them probably drive a Porsche. At least, that’s what the folks at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart are banking on.
That’s right. The location showcasing much of the German car brand’s history has launched what it calls an “escape game”- presumably because it can’t call a challenge that spreads out across the museum a ‘room’. But what, exactly, does it involve?
Porsche-ing their luck
Image: Porsche
For starters, it involves an online booking and up to five visitors per team. Even if you’ve got fewer, the price for access remains the same — R3,500 or €175. The booking also covers entry into the museum itself. There is a slight age requirement — Porsche reckons participants should be fourteen years or older — and obviously, you need to be in Germany to make your appointment.
Participants get a backpack stuffed with the gear needed to solve Porsche’s escape game on arrival. They also have a time limit of 90 minutes to “[prove] themselves to be Porsche Heritage Guardians”. Solving various puzzles around the museum that revolve around “[p]assion, pioneering spirit, performance and design” gives players the clues they need to open an Escape Cube. They’re helped along the way by a tablet (the computing device), an AI chatbot, augmented reality functions, and what looks to be an ultraviolet light.
It’s a little like a Dan Brown novel, only nobody is dead and there’s no killer monk with a self-flagellation fetish after you. The minds at Porsche might want to think about adding one of the latter, though. With that sort of motivation, visitors might finish up this particular Porsche challenge in a little under 60 minutes.