Imagine you’re in PE class: you’ve just finished warming up with some jumping jacks, push-ups, and several laps around the gym. You exchange pleasantries with your classmates as your teacher brings out several rubber balls from the equipment closet.

Before you know it, you’ve been elected as one of the team captains for the day’s activity: dodge ball.

The only thing left to do is pick your teammates, which can be an easy or difficult task depending on the way you look at it. Accepting your new role, you start glancing around the room, mulling over each one of your classmates.

So, who’s it going to be?

Group activities like dodge ball and other sports encourage teamwork and communication, two of the most valuable skills to have as an individual. How well the team meshes together can be a learning process, but by instilling a sense of camaraderie, people become more confident and willingly put themselves out there to develop their social skills.

As a valued member of the team, each person gains a sense of significance, motivating them to work hard and improve their technique. With certain abilities highly sought out for particular activities, it all boils down to each activity’s unique nature: is it more of a physical exercise or a mental one?

For something like physical education, it’s pretty straightforward. You would pick your classmates with the best physical attributes: most active, outgoing, athletic, etc. Escape rooms, on the other hand, call for a different type of athlete – one of the mind. These unique types of games focus on mental dexterity, which may prove much more difficult to decipher than what you see on the surface. For example, a person who exudes great intelligence but lacks common sense may not be the prime model for your escape room team. In most cases, someone who displays a fair balance of intellect and judgment tend to perform better in escape games.

And the great thing is, that can be anyone!

To give you a better idea, here are 5 unique individuals you should try an escape room with:

1.    Friend (Platonic)

This is everyone’s ideal situation. Friends are people you’re already familiar with. Your friendship has withstood the test of time and you now want to elevate your relationship by doing an escape room.

Escape rooms are great activities among friends because they can strengthen the bond of your friendship. These games can be utilized as learning tools to build trust and allow people to open up to each other. They also serve as a great outlet for connecting friends from different social groups; game environments naturally eliminate any awkward tension between people and motivate them to want to work together to achieve victory.

Friends provide that sense of camaraderie, regardless of the type of social group. Once engaged in the escape room, details like that don’t matter. There is no social hierarchy. Everyone can take turns leading the way and share the spotlight when deducing a solution for a particular puzzle.

2.    Friend (Romantic)

Now, I’ve seen a few dates turn awry during an escape game, but for other reasons aside from the nature of the escape room itself.

On the plus side, bringing your date/significant other to play an escape game has its benefits. From a date standpoint, especially early on in the dating phase, escape rooms can be a great test for overall compatibility. Remember: every relationship is based off of trust and communication. If you can establish that solid foundation in the beginning, you and your +1 are more likely to go further along in the dating process.

Like their newbie counterparts, escape rooms can work just as much magic for veteran couples that have been together for quite some time. Relationships that have lasted for years require constant maintenance and excitement to keep each party invested in the other person. It’s hard to come up with new date ideas if you’ve been with someone for so long, but escape rooms present fun, unique experiences that can keep the spark going and elevate the dynamic of your relationship with your loved one.

3.    Family Member

We’ve all undoubtedly been in the situation where our family tries to get everyone together to engage in some mundane bonding activity, usually to mixed responses.

But that time is over!

Escape rooms provide more excitement than singing Kumbaya around the campfire. It’s the perfect activity to really arouse interest in your family and get them to engage collectively as a group.

Similar to its effect on friendships, escape rooms can boost the dynamic of any relationship, including familial ones. Maybe you have kids with different interests and want to find an activity that they’d all enjoy. Or maybe you want to strengthen the bond between you and your siblings by doing something different, yet challenging. Whatever the case is, you’re sure to experience something unlike anything you’ve ever seen by doing an escape room with your family.

4.    Coworker

This can be a good choice, but it really depends on the type of coworkers involved. Coworkers are an interesting group of people because they hover around the fine line between friends and acquaintances.

Escape rooms are a fantastic team building activity and can be a catalyst for building the chemistry within your team at work. Here at Brainy Actz, we actually specialize in hosting corporate team outings (I’ve personally hosted groups from Google, Blizzard, The Irvine Company, AT&T, In-N-Out, and Chase bank).

If you’re interested in getting to know your fellow colleagues or want to motivate your entire squad, consider taking on an escape room challenge for your next team outing. You might be surprised with the results.

5.    Stranger

I’m not going to lie – the ‘stranger’ scenario is probably the least ideal situation for anyone playing an escape game, however, it isn’t as bad as one might think.

Far from it, actually.

In the real world, you may be forced to work with strangers in much worse conditions. You could be stuck working as backup to a condescending jerk for a big project. Or maybe you’re forced to deal with a workaholic that doesn’t trust anyone to help them complete an assignment.

Overall, you won’t have to worry about that weird tension because escape room participants are easy-going, friendly people. The escape game’s innate concept attracts these types of individuals and engages them in a captivating experience that is deprived of any social awkwardness. By implementing a sense of urgency within a game environment, people naturally put their differences aside and want to work together to accomplish their goal.

Remember early on when you were taught to “never talk to strangers?” Rest assured, these strangers are the good kind.