Escape Room Business to Open in Batavia

An escape room business is planning to open in coming weeks in Batavia.

The Room Fox Valley, at 160 S. Water Street, will open on April 1. The escape room will require "players" to race against time to conquer the room’s puzzles and challenges using teamwork, logic, and out-of-the-box thinking, according to a news release.

The Room Fox Valley will debut its first room with a Victorian murder mystery, which its creator describes as "a hybrid of sorts, wedding the escape room concept and with a traditional country-house murder mystery. The goal of the game isn’t to escape the room but to unravel the whodunit. Players are not just solving puzzles trying to get to the end, but finding clues to the mystery every step of the way."

“I hadn’t even heard of an escape room a year ago. But as soon as I tried my first one, I was hooked. Even though we didn’t escape the room, we still had a blast," said creator Catherine Arne. "The only thing I thought it was lacking was a story. Being a writer, I could immediately see the possibilities.”

Although the room was initially envisioned as a conventional one-hour game in which players who get to the end of the trail of clues in under an hour are rewarded with the killer’s identity, Arne quickly discovered that players wanted more time to discuss the clues and solve the crime themselves. So a two-hour “deluxe” version of the game is also available at select times.

Reservations can be made online at TheRoomFoxValley.com. Tickets for the standard room are $30 and each room holds up to six players. If your group doesn’t fill the room, you will be placed with others.

“Six is really the sweet spot,” Arne said. “Enough to get the benefit of multiple perspectives but not so many that communication suffers.”

Arne plans to eventually open two other rooms in the same location and to branch out with other games as well.

“We plan to have a portable ‘room in a box’ and special events like scavenger hunts and a spy night which can be played in a restaurant or bar," she said.

The Room Fox Valley will be having a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Friday, April, 1, at 5:30 p.m. at 160 S. Water Street, Suite B, in Batavia, followed by a grand opening celebration at 7 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

There will be games, prizes, an exhibit of quirky art from internationally-acclaimed artist Keri Colestock, and a chance to play THE CIRCUS TENT, a teenie-weenie “mini” game room for people to get a taste of what the concept is all about.