“Code Green” has the elements of a modern escape room.
We enter what we are told is a hidden bunker converted into a research laboratory. It's dark, but there are clearly challenges all around us: patterns on the walls, a cork board filled with notes and pictures connected by string, and, before us, on what appears to be a concrete table, a small puzzle board with many of its twisted details. There are pieces missing, something like strange and otherworldly tools.
The current trend is narrative-heavy escape rooms (see “The Ladder” by Los Angeles-based Hatch Escapes, a decades-old corporate mystery), and “Code Green” is aware of that. In the game, the year is 2085, aliens have invaded Earth and an important researcher has disappeared. We must explore his secret scientific hideout and find out what happened to him. Oh, and this bunker is flooded with radiation that can mutate us. We need to find a way to disable that.
But it soon becomes apparent that “Code Green” is not your typical escape room. The walls? Cardboard, with paper bricks taped together. The low ceiling? It is made of cardboard. Hanging blankets create the boundaries of the space. If you separate them, you'll find yourself in a messy corner where there's a desk on top of a bunk bed next to a wall full of posters, including one of musician Andrew Bird.
The escape room industry has exploded over the past decade, with an estimated 2,000 installations in the U.S., according to a 2023 industry report from Room Escape Artist, an enthusiast site that maintains a base of operational data from all known rooms in the country.
But “Code Green” is not one of them, as “Code Green” was built inside a dormitory on the UCLA campus by Tyler Neufeld, 21, a theater student with a specific interest in design. It's cozy: four people can't navigate the space without constantly moving past each other. But for the past eight months, Neufeld, a Bakersfield native, has been running the free “Code Green” escape room for fellow students and their friends while juggling 22 units, his role as resident advisor and a job at part time as office. assistant. On a recent Sunday, he hosted three 60-minute games.
When I visit him on a Wednesday night, Neufeld, wearing glasses, is nervous. It highlights that the “Green Code” is intended only for students, and registrations are made through an online spreadsheet. Participants, he says, need a UCLA email address. Although she isn't hiding the escape room (she says her resident advisor office and teachers know about it, and she posts “Code Green” availability updates on her “Dorm Scapes” Instagram), it hasn't been officially sanctioned by the school. He is aware that press attention may hold him back (a UCLA spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment).
UCLA student Tyler Neufeld offers a tour of his escape room, which he built inside his dorm room. Neufeld lives alone as a resident advisor and is scheduled to graduate in June.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
But after a moment, he shrugs and says, “It's worth it,” clearly wanting some recognition for what he's built.
“What happens if they close us? Alright. We came this far,” adds Michaela Duarte, 26, a theater student who has done some production designs in the space.
While Neufeld's escape room has helped expand his social circle, attracting the attention of students like Duarte who want to work at the intersection of theater and theme parks, maybe it's also a little exciting to run something of almost professional quality from a bedroom. .
Most of the puzzles in “Code Green” are text-based: a note in a research book can lead to a cipher challenge, which in turn will reveal a map, which is actually a code to decipher the pattern. hidden from the cardboard taped. bricks. Delete the correct one and find another note.
Neufeld, or one of his friends, acts as “game master,” hiding in the closet pretending to do extraterrestrial research while offering clues, which may be verbal or written on the back of a television monitor held up with cardboard.
Neufeld estimates he built the room for less than $100 and it is constructed entirely from found or vandalized objects. “I have experience in student theater, where they give you zero dollars,” he says. “I wanted to think about what I had and what was walkable. I didn't want to go too sci-fi, like being on a spaceship. That would look bad. But I can make stone. I can make brick. That's not difficult. “It just takes a long time.”
Spend a little time playing “Code Green” and you'll spot additional clues that it's a bedroom. That concrete table we see when we first walk in? Actually, that's Neufeld's fridge, filled not with clues but with items like oat milk. (Duarte glued painted Styrofoam to the body of the refrigerator, giving it a shine similar to aged metal.) Same with the dresser, although Neufeld noticed that people couldn't help but rummage through his clothes, so there are notes from the story there.
Some “Code Green” puzzles are only visible under black light.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“Honestly, they're here because I don't have anything else to put in the drawers and I wouldn't want them to be empty,” Neufeld says of keeping her clothes accessible to guests. “It's the same as playing with the refrigerator. It's very cheesy. …We all know this is a bedroom. You don’t have to immerse yourself 100% when you can have a little fun.”
Scenic designer Andy Broomell, a UCLA professor who teaches Neufeld in one of his drawing classes, heard about “Code Green.” “My first reaction was, 'I'd love to do it,'” he says, though he notes that's not possible, citing the ethics of visiting students where they live.
“I thought it was exciting and, more than anything, I love when a student takes on their own project and does something they are passionate about,” Broomell says.
“Code Green” has evolved significantly since it began last semester, and Neufeld, who graduates in June, is preparing to move forward. He has his second escape room in his dorm room, for next semester, in the planning stages. He's up to something more light-hearted: a game of squirrel heist.
Neufeld says the idea to build an escape room in his bedroom came to him in the middle of the night, but it was also born out of that life as a solo resident advisor: “I felt alone,” he says.
“It was really one of those 2 a.m. ideas. I thought, 'I have to do this.' I can't pass up this opportunity. Basically, this is a spare room; yes, I'm working like [resident advisor] get this space, but if I had to rent a space after college, I think it would be much more difficult. That same night it was 2 in the morning and I started blocking him,” Neufeld says.
Tyler Neufeld, a UCLA student, wonders if there is a future in murals that double as puzzles. Here it is next to her piece “Don't Bring Your Zombies to Work,” a series of painted challenges she created on a bedroom staircase.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
It's safe to say that “Code Green” has helped Neufeld find his tribe. For L Siswanto, 21, an education student who helps Neufeld with the racing games, the room was an opportunity to explore a passion.
“I'm very interested in escape rooms,” Siswanto says. “I've only been to a few in real life because they're so expensive, but I had a phase where I was obsessed with playing every escape room I could. [Apple’s] App Store. So when I saw that there was a free escape room and they were looking for members to help, I thought, 'Wow.' I love this kind of stuff.'”
A total of 10 students are now contributing, either by improving the production or maintaining the Instagram account. Duarte joined the project partly inspired by Neufeld's conviction, impressed that he was never convinced of anything potentially illicit or center-left.
“When Tyler had the idea to build an escape room in his bedroom, [I thought,] “That’s crazy,” Duarte says. “But it's really cool, exciting and inspiring. “I want to surround myself with people who are interested in the same things as me and who have the tenacity and confidence to do it.”
“Code Green” helped UCLA student Tyler Neufeld (center) find his tribe. He now has about 10 people helping in the escape room, including Michaela Duarte, left, and L Siswanto.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
There are times when Neufeld admits he wishes he had his entire bedroom back, like when he has to crawl under a hanging piece of cardboard to get to his bed, but his entrepreneurial brain is working, too. Wondering if there is a career possibility in creating puzzle murals, perhaps for bars or cafes. (He has one of those too, painted on a nearby bedroom staircase and titled “Don't Bring Your Zombies to Work.” It's self-guided, meaning it doesn't need a game master, and is a separate entity from “Code Green.”)
What's more, building the escape room has ignited a passion for creating environments and he hopes to make a career in the theme park industry. He also expanded his definition of theater.
“It's basically a one-hour, one-act play,” Neufeld says. “But the stage is around you and the audience is your actors. It is an extension of theater.”
Neufeld is in the process of perfecting a Zoom-based edition of “Code Green,” hoping the video conferencing service can help expose him to non-students. But despite the interest he has garnered on campus, living in a dorm as a resident advisor keeps him humble. Neufeld laughs when asked what his neighbors think and reveals that he tried to recruit his housemates to come play through a post on a social media app. “I put it on GroupMe and it didn't get any likes,” he says.
It turns out that escaping the realities of modern life isn't as easy as building your own escape.
