Students enjoy TigerLand virtual escape room

Student organizations have struggled to hold on-campus events this semester due to COVID-19 restrictions. However, many organizations have found ways to work around this roadblock and bring students together for events.

On April 12, Park University’s PSGA and Pirate Fitness sponsored a virtual escape room called TigerLand, a spinoff of the Netflix show “Tiger King.” The first 100 students to sign up received a prize and the first 20 students to escape received an additional prize.

Students accessed the event through a link and were either placed into randomly assigned teams or teams they had formed prior, and then they communicated through a Zoom call. They were prompted to watch an introductory video where a character, Bobby Majestic, spoke about TigerLand and what the escape room was about.

The story of TigerLand began with the premise that someone had stolen money from Bobby Majestic and from TigerLand, and students had to solve various riddles in order to unlock 10 videos that gave even more clues.

These videos were of other characters from TigerLand that told different stories about their time at TigerLand and who they thought did or did not steal the money. After watching all 10 videos, students had to decide who was telling the truth and who was lying, which ultimately led them to discover who stole the money.

After deciding on a person, students submitted their guess and a game master entered the Zoom call to discuss if the guess was correct or not. This virtual escape room had a fairly high difficulty level, and it took some students several tries to get the right answer.

Sophomore criminal justice major Daisie Cruse said she really liked the virtual escape room.

“It was kind of hard to interact with the people, but the puzzles and everything were fun,” Cruse said. She explained that virtual activities are more difficult to interact with others than in person, but she would definitely do something like this again.

The first 100 students to start the escape room received a $5 gift card to Amazon and the first 20 students to escape the room received a JBL speaker.

PSGA and Pirate Fitness’ last event of the semester was the Donut Stress Fest on April 26, the week before finals, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. There was a donut food truck, and they handed out free donuts and a surprise Stress-Less Box containing stress management items to the first 100 students.

The TigerLand virtual escape room landing page where participants put in the passwords to open coded videos.