'I became alone': why a student built a escape room in a UCLA dormitory

“Code Green” has the external signs of a modern escape room.

We are entering what we are told that it is a hidden tightening research laboratory. It is dark, but there are clearly challenges that surround us: patterns in the walls, a cork board filled with notes and images connected by String and, in front of us on what seems to be a concrete table, a small puzzle board with many of its twisted pieces – something similar to strange tools and another missing world.

The trend today is the escape rooms with a heavy story – see “The scale” From the hatch of the escape, a corporate mystery several times – and “Green code” is aware of this. In the game, the year is 2085, the extraterrestrials invaded the land and an important researcher has disappeared. We have to explore his secret scientific refuge and discover what happened to him. Oh, and this bunker is flooded with radiation that can mutate us. We have to find a way to deactivate this.

But it soon becomes obvious that the “green code” is not a typical escape room. The walls? Cardboard, with paper bricks stuck on it. The low ceiling? It is made of construction paper. The suspended covers create the limits of space. If you separate them, you will find yourself in a crowded corner where an office rests at the top of a bunk bed next to a wall filled with posters, including one of the Andrew Bird musicians.

The escape industry has exploded in the past decade, with around 2,000 facilities in the United States, according to a 2023 Industry report From Room Escape Artist, a passionate site that maintains a database being executed for all known parts in the country.

But “code green” is not one of them, because “code green” is built inside a dormitory on the UCLA campus by 21 years Tyler NeufeldA major in theater with specific interest in design. It is comfortable: four people cannot navigate space without moving constantly around each other. However, for eight months, Neufeld, from Bakersfield, has directed free “Green code” Escape room for colleagues and their friends while juggling 22 units, his role as resident advisor and part -time job as an office assistant. A recent Sunday, he hosted three 60 -minute games.

When I visit a Wednesday evening, the Neufeld with glasses is nervous. He stresses that “Code Green” is intended for students only, with registrations made via an online spreadsheet. Participants, he says, need an e-mail address from the UCLA. Although he does not hide the escape room – he says that his resident advisor office and his teachers know it and that he publishes updates of “code green” availability on his “Dorm Scapes” Instagram – It was not officially sanctioned by the school. It is aware that the attention of the press can stop it (a UCLA spokesperson has not returned any requests for comments).

But after a while, he shruggs and said, “It is worth it”, clearly wanting a certain recognition for what he built.

“What's going on if they have closed to us? It is good. We have done so far,” added Michaela Duarte, 26, another major in theater who has made a production design on space.

Although Neufeld's escape room has helped extend its social circle, attracting the attention of students like Duarte who want to work at the intersection between theater and theme parks, there may also be a little pleasure to direct something almost professional quality of a dormitory.

Most “code green code” are based on text – a note in a research book can lead us to a figure challenge, which in turn will reveal a card, which is actually a code to decipher the hidden model of the glued cardboard bricks. Remove the good and find another note.

Neufeld, or one of his friends, serves as a “game master”, hiding in the closet, pretending to do extraterrestrial research while offering advice, which can be verbal or written at the back of a television instructor subject to a box.

Neufeld estimates that it has built the room for less than $ 100, and it is entirely built out of the objects found or ransacked. “I have experience in student theater, where they give you zero dollar,” he says. “I wanted to think about what I had and what was passable. I didn't want to go too much science fiction, like being in a spacecraft. It would seem bad. But I can do stone. I can do brick. It's not difficult. It's just time.”

Spend a little time playing the “Green code” and you detect additional gifts that it is a dormitory space. This concrete slab of a table that we see when we enter for the first time? It is in fact the refrigerator of Neufeld, filled not clues but with items such as oat milk. (Duarte has affixed the polystyrene foam painted in the body of the refrigerator, giving it an aged metal flash.

Some puzzles in “Green code” are only visible under Blacklight.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

“Honestly, they are here because I have nothing else to put in the drawers, and I would not want the drawers to be empty,” said Neufeld, keeping his clothes accessible to the guests. “It's the same thing I play with the refrigerator. It's very Campy. … We all know it's a dormitory. No need to opt for 100% immersion when you can have a little fun.”

Scene designer Andy Broomell, professor at the UCLA who teaches Neufeld in one of his writing lessons, heard of “Green Code”. “My first reaction was:” I would love to do it, “he said, although it notes that it is not possible, citing the ethics of students on their place of residence.

“I thought it was exciting, and more than anything, I like when a student will undertake his own project and will do something that fascinates them,” explains Broomell.

“Code Green” has evolved considerably since its start during a previous semester, and Neufeld, a graduate in June, is about to move on. He has his second escape dormitory, for the next semester, in the planning stages. It plots something lighter: a robbery involving squirrels.

Neufeld says that the idea of ​​building an escape room in his dormitory came to him in the middle of the night, but also she was born from this solo resident advisor: “I became alone,” he said.

“It was really one of these 2 -o'clock ideas. I said to myself, “I have to do it. I cannot leave this opportunity.

UCLA student, Tyler Neufeld, wonders if there is a future in murals that double as puzzles. Here, he stands next to his play “Don't Treat Your Zombies to Work”, a series of painted challenges he created in a dormitory stairwell.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

He is sure to say that “Code Green” helped Neufeld find his tribe. For Siswanto, 21, an adult in education who assists Neufeld in running, the room was an opportunity to explore a passion.

“I am very interested in escape rooms,” says Siswanto. “I did not go to a few IRL because they are so expensive, but I had a phase where I am obsessed by reading each escape room that I could on (Apple) App Store. So, when I saw, there was a free escape room and they were looking for members to help, I said to myself:” Wow. I love this type of stuff. “”

In total, 10 students now contribute either by reversing production, or by maintaining the Instagram account. Duarte joined the project partly inspired by Neufeld's conviction, impressed that he has never spoken of something potentially illegal or left.

“When Tyler had the idea of ​​building an escape room in his dormitory, (I thought), it's crazy,” said Duarte. “But it's really cool, exciting and inspiring. I want to surround myself with people who are interested in the same things as I am and that I am tenacity and confidence to do it.”

“Code Green” helped the UCLA student, Tyler Neufeld, in the center, to find his tribe. He now has around 10 people helping in the escape room, including Michaela Duarte, on the left, and Siswanto.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Sometimes Neufeld admits that he wants to have his complete dormitory back, like when he has to crawl under the suspended card to reach his bed, but his entrepreneurial brain also shoots. He wonders if there is a career possibility in creating puzzle murals, perhaps for bars or cafes. (He also has one, painted in a stairwell of a dormitory nearby and entitled “Do not put your zombies at work”. It is self-guided, which does not need a game master, and is a distinct entity of “Green Code”.))))

In addition, the construction of the escape room sparked a passion for manufacturing environments, and he hopes a career in the theme park industry. This has also widened its definition of theater.

“It is essentially a game in one hour,” explains Neufeld. “But the whole is all around you and the public is your actors. It is an extension of the theater.”

Neufeld is settling in an edition based on the zoom of “code green”, hoping that the videoconferencing service could help expose it to non-students. But despite the interest on the campus he is aroused, living in a dormitory as a resident advisor Le Garde humble. Neufeld laughs when asked what his neighbors think, revealing that he had tried to recruit his accommodation peers to come and play via an article on an application on social networks. “I put him in the ground group, and he did not have likes,” he said.

It turns out that the exhaust of the realities of modern life, it turns out, is not as simple as building your own escape.