Business Spotlight: Puzzle Pieces

The door closes and locks. A bloody handprint stains the wall next to picture frames holding vital clues – words, numbers and faces that need to be pieced together. The hour countdown starts as frantic players scramble to decipher meaning. The game is afoot.

Ken and Maranda Mills haven’t been the same since they visited Greece in April 2013. The couple discovered an immersive trending gaming experience they’ve brought home to the Ozarks called Clue Pursuit.

“We were going to be in Athens, so I looked up things to do on TripAdvisor, and something came up called Athens Clue. It had five stars and hundreds of reviews, but none of the reviews told exactly what it was,” Maranda Mills says.

Intrigued by vague notions of mysteries and puzzles, the couple tried it out.

“They kind of shoved us in a room and told us John Monroe was murdered,” she says. “We didn’t get out. We were down to the last step, but we had so much fun.”

Later that day, they went to the Parthenon and Acropolis and found themselves standing around talking about their first escape-room experience.

“We couldn’t get over how cool Athens Clue was,” Maranda says.

Competitor pileup
The Millses launched Clue Pursuit in February 2015 at 1701 S. Campbell Ave., a stand-alone building just north of Maschino’s Home Furnishings in the Wedgewood Center. Though enticed by the proposition of being near Bass Pro Shops, Springfield was not their first target market. The couple tried for nine months to open in the Dallas metroplex, but found commercial property owners were unfamiliar with the concept and, therefore, deemed it too risky.

“We knew it was just a matter of time before this blows up,” says Ken Mills, who runs Cox Roofing Co. LLC full time in addition to Clue Pursuit.

It seems they were right.

When the couple returned from Greece, they found only a couple of escape rooms stateside – in New York and Los Angeles. Now, there are hundreds, including 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kansas and 12 in Missouri listed by EscapeRoomDirectory.com. The Millses say Clue Pursuit was the only escape room concept in Springfield when they opened. Now, the area competitors are piling up; there’s Springfield Escape Room, Race 2 Xcape LLC and 417 Escape Artist LLC in Springfield, Questledge in Ozark, and Cryptex Branson and Escape Code in Branson. Users of Groupon regularly see local escape-room gaming offers.

In the lock-in rooms at Clue Pursuit – complete with a panic button for emergencies – game masters help guide players in their themed spaces through audio and video communications. The Millses say they’ve experienced a wide range of setups, and their aim is to be difficult enough to keep visitors challenged. Startup costs in Springfield were around $150,000.

“Our whole point is to keep them immersed in that experience for an hour,” Ken says.  

Playing the game
Clue Pursuit hit profitability within six months of opening. Buoyed by early sales, the Millses launched a second location in January, setting up in Kansas City’s Westport district. The three-room facility has one unique game – Call of Gold – with a story centered on a crooked mayor and his gang from the 1880s. It has a 20 percent completion rate.  

Clue Pursuit games require at least three people to play. Prices per person are $25 for three or four people, $22 for five or six and $20 for seven or more. On Saturdays, their most popular day, 24 available slots typically run at least 90 percent full. Games are offered Thursday through Sunday, but groups can book their own experiences on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Ken says after being bitten by the escape-room bug, the couple began to hunt for a suitable franchise. With no turnkey entry into the business at hand, they tracked down the designer of Athens Clue’s John Monroe Room to help create the six game rooms in the Queen City.

Istvan Rusvai designs escape rooms, aka exit rooms, with his brother through their Budapest, Hungary-based company MazeBase. They got into the gaming business in late 2011, when the first wave of escape rooms caught on in Europe.

“Our heads are full of unnecessary knowledge, so we were prepared for this our whole lives,” Rusvai says by email, noting escape room games in Japan were first on the scene.
 
The Hungarian brothers have created 25 game designs for roughly 50 escape-room companies worldwide. Games include The Haunted Swamp, The Tomb of the Pharaoh and The Zen Room, which the Millses are now building at Clue Pursuit.

MazeBase.hu lists prices from a U.S. dollar equivalent of $3,420-$6,840 based on installation or supervision needs, and there is an annual charge of $1,368, or 1,200 euros, based on current conversion. Rusvai declined to disclose charges for Clue Pursuit.
 
The trend is catching on, the Millses say, because the thrill of solving a puzzle appeals to all ages. While Ken is unsure how new competition will impact revenue, he feels having more options for fans should grow demand.

“If an enthusiast comes and plays one of our rooms – it’s not like a local bar, restaurant or bowling alley – they can only do so much and then they want to play another room,” he says. “Any promotion or knowledge of escape rooms is only going to promote us as a whole.”