As much as everyone loves this island, calls it home and can spend endless hours, stretched across the warm sand as the waves crash along the seabed, let’s face the fact... even that can become mundane at times, and a change of sorts is needed. And no, that doesn’t mean a person should head out for bowling or the malls.
If you seek something more thrilling like us, you better head towards ‘Challenge Chambers’. A place that delivers the exhilaration level needed to make it a memorable, adrenaline-charged evening with friends and family. The real-Life escape game is certainly the first of its kind in Bahrain. It sees players being locked in a small room under mysterious circumstances. The objective is to solve the mystery by finding hidden objects, answering riddles and solving puzzles by connecting the missing links. It’s not that easy though; players will have to use their intellect, intuition and their sixth sense to make a successful escape and thus win the challenge. And the exciting part is the ticking timebomb that doesn’t give you all the time of the world to get it done.
Extremely impressed by something that is innovatively challenging, we decided to meet the person who brought it to Bahrain and were equally impressed to learn, it was the effort of sisters, Hanadi Alshehi and Heba Alshehi, that allowed them to open the first branch of Challenge Chambers in 2015, in Al Raya Mall. We spoke to Hanadi to know more on this out of the box, time-bound game and the need for such adrenaline pumping activities.
W. What is the concept behind Challenge Chambers?
Hanadi:The concept behind Challenge Chambers is real-life role-playing escape games, which started in Japan in 2005 in the form of online games and developed into real escape games in Japan through experiments and from then the concept became so popular in Asia and reached to USA and Europe. It was introduced by Challenge Chambers in Dubai in 2014 as the first escape game concept in the Middle East.
W.How did you come up with something so unique?
Hanadi: Considering the young people activities in Bahrain these days, we felt that there is need for a niche entertainment in the region. While there are countless activities for much younger people or children, like sports activities, golf, pool and others, we sorely felt the absence of some mentally stimulating entertainment for adults and young adults. We introduced the 1st real escape games in Bahrain, by developing our own games through studying the culture of Middle East players and coming up with unique game designs, story-lines, codes & puzzles, so every game product is of our own imagination and creativity. And we introduce new games with exciting story-lines every few months.
W.How has the response been so far?
Hanadi: Very positive and each player wishes to come back to play the remaining games and becomes sort of addicted to the escape games.
W.What age group do you target?
Hanadi: We target groups of 3 to 5 players from the age of 10 to 99 but if you are above 100 then we salute you and offer you a free game.
W.Do you plan on opening more branches in Bahrain?
Hanadi: Yes hopefully in a few years we will open bigger branches of Challenge Chambers.
W.Did you see a market demand for something like this?
Hanadi:The obvious need was very clear to us when we first tried this concept.
W.What are the major challenges you faced in opening this in Bahrain?
Hanadi:Like any new business our main challenges were finding the right staff to run the place and after a few trial and errors we managed to find the best team.
W.With the leisure culture focused on malls and movies, will challenge chambers pave the way for more interesting adventures?
Hanadi: Yes Challenge Chambers is opening new doors for the entertainment industry in the Middle East and it’s becoming more and more popular. Also our own players and customers are helping us improve the games through their comments and suggestions to make the experience even more interesting.
