Okemos duo emphasizes storytelling in escape room venture

Rob Garrod and Becca Horste have tackled upwards of 100 escape rooms each since they tried their first together in 2017.

Popularized in the United States in the mid-2010s, an escape room involves “locking” two or more participants inside a themed room for a predetermined duration. As they explore the deliberately crafted setting, they’ll find a series of puzzles and clues that ultimately lead them to the exit.

“We got hooked pretty quickly,” Garrod said. “After about five escape rooms, we decided we’d love to start designing some ourselves.”

In 2019, the couple began looking for facilities to house an escape room business, but the pandemic forced them to suspend those efforts until 2021. They signed a lease for a 2,100-square-foot space in Okemos in late 2022 and launched Escapes Unlocked in May 2023 with one hard-level room, “Dream Explorers,” which is themed around the subconscious.

Last December, they opened an intermediate-level room, “Castle Quest,” a dungeon-like setting complete with prop swords, scrolls and armor.

With the debut of a third room geared toward novice escapers and families, “The Case of the Missing Cookie,” earlier this month, the pair felt now was finally the time to publicize Escapes Unlocked to the community. They held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Nov. 8 and a grand opening celebration on Nov. 9. 

While all the rooms can be solved by just two participants, Garrod and Hoste said groups of four are typically optimal. Interested patrons can book any of the three rooms online from 2:20 to 8 p.m. Thursday, 2:20 to 9:40 p.m. Friday, 11 a.m. to 9:40 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. The business also takes walk-ins during its regular hours and can accommodate other dates and times by request.

Garrod and Hoste are also looking to design take-home escape room games, which would allow customers to bring the fun into their own homes.

Garrod, a Lansing-area native and amateur competitive Scrabble player, quit his IT job in 2022 to run the place full time. He and Hoste spent between five and nine months designing each room.

“The key component when we approach a new room is we really try to build a world in the story for it first. From there, we think about what kind of activities would make sense in that world. We try to figure out what kind of puzzles might fit with those objects and settings because it’s important that it all comes together to tell a story,” Garrod explained. “We take feedback and our own observations from watching the rooms as people are playing, and we tinker with all of them continuously.”