Humans of GWI - Nikos P's story

Inspired by the famous Humans of New York blog featuring interviews with people on the streets of New York, we’ve created our own Humans of GWI blog. Expect to read interesting - and sometimes completely unexpected - stories from GWI'ers across the globe.

?? Talent Acquisition Partner in the P&C team

?? Athens office

?? GWIer since January 2022

I’ve always enjoyed puzzles, treasure hunts and role playing games - especially ones with a good story. In 2016, I went with a group of friends to try an escape room in Athens. We didn’t manage to escape, but we had a lot of fun.

Completing escape rooms became something my girlfriend and I enjoyed doing with friends over the years. Instead of going out for drinks or a night out, we’d head to an escape room. It wasn’t a race to rack up numbers, but after years of playing, I’ve now completed around 230 rooms with a success rate of 97% — and yes, I do keep track on an Excel sheet. ??

Escape rooms in Athens have really evolved. When we first started going in 2016, escape rooms were a fairly new concept and were just one room filled with riddles and locks. Back then, we wrote reviews and gave our opinions of the rooms to others in the community. As they grew in popularity, we started to see escape rooms with multiple conjoining rooms, epic constructions, high-quality actors, extended timings, and more. I’ve been in an escape room that looked like a chapel with catacombs, and inside a spaceship! I also have to mention the escape room that had a slide in it, the one that was in a fully kitted out ambulance, and the two escape rooms that had rivers flowing through them. ??

Another thing that’s changed is the mentality of escaping the room. It used to be that if you didn’t complete the puzzles in the time limit, you simply didn’t escape the room. Now, it’s all about seeing everything the room has to offer and getting the full experience. A good game master will help you to escape right on time. If you’re going too fast, they’ll send in actors more frequently to scare you. If you’re going too slow, they’ll give you more clues. If it’s too noisy to hear your teammates or too dark to see the clues, they’ll help. One time, they broke the rules and let us play for another 45 minutes, as we were moving through the room too slowly because we were all so scared. ??

While we don’t have an exact plan when we enter a room, we’ve naturally developed a system over time that works for our team. As soon as we enter, we spread out and start calling out the locks—whether they need numbers, letters, or keys—and check for hidden doors or anything that might give us a head start. Through experience, we’ve learned to play to our strengths with clear communication. Still, no matter how prepared you feel, you never really know what to expect…

I’ve seen actors breaking through walls, crawling out from under the bed, and even crawling on the ceiling - in the adrenaline of the moment and in the dark, you don’t tend to notice the cables holding them up! I’ve also been chased through a maze with an actor carrying a real chainsaw. It may not have had the blade in it, but I could smell the gasoline. ??

In one particular escape room, I had a knee injury so couldn't crawl away from the actor as quickly as my teammates. In the mad rush, my own girlfriend happily trampled me to get past and save herself! The actor caught up with me and grabbed my foot and pulled off my shoe. When my teammates went back to the room later to solve a riddle, they forgot to pick it up. The actor felt bad for me and had to throw it at me so I could wear it for the rest of the game.

In another one, I was on a spooky sailing ship and managed to cut my hand on something sharp. I let the game master know, and all of a sudden we heard a ghostly voice say “Do not worry, the ship will provide” as a first aid kit came hurtling towards us.

I also have to mention one of my friends who, after experiencing so many of them himself, decided to make an escape room for us in his home. He used a projector to incorporate videos, and a murder took place! I was impressed with the broom he gave us - it had a mirror on the end so we could hunt for clues behind the top of the curtains.

It’s hard to believe, but I haven’t done all the escape rooms in Athens. In fact, one of my teammates has completed 438 of them (over double my number), with a 98% escape rate! And there are still more to be completed. Athens is surprisingly advanced in escape rooms around the world - there’s actually a trend where escapers across Europe visit Athens for a weekend and play up to six escape rooms in two days.

I genuinely spend most of my time in escape rooms feeling scared (and touching stuff I probably shouldn’t) - but I love nothing more than being fully immersed in the experience and having a great time with my friends.

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