Here’s another exciting and logical way for the exit game to develop: the UK’s first pop-up exit game. (Surely not the world’s first, though; compare with, for instance, the The Purge: Breakout attraction, as discussed back in May.)

The Metropolitan Arts Centre is an arts venue (think combination gallery, theatre and so on) that opened in Belfast two years ago. This has a dedicated space called The Den where young creatives meet weekly; the Den collective put on the MADE Festival, “Belfast’s only arts festival produced by and for 14-18 year olds“, MADE standing for Music, Art, Dance and Everything. Pretty cool. Even cooler, and more relevant to this site, is one of the events that the collective have featured as part of this year’s event: Escap3d @ the Mac. However, as it’s only running from Monday 6th October (er, yesterday) through to Sunday 12th October, you’ll need to move quickly to get to take part. There are five slots per day from Tuesday to Sunday, two in the afternoon and three in the evening.

You are in a room. The door is locked. You have 60 minutes to get out.

Think you can make it out?

Can you bring your A-Game and assemble a team who can solve puzzles and think outside of the box? No more point’n’click pixel hunting at home as you sit in front of your monitor in a superhero onesie. Things just got real!

£4 per person and maximum of 6 per team.

So it’s an exit game, with a name revealed on Facebook to be “The Revenge Of The Alchemist”, at a theatre as part of an arts festival. Escap3d, quoted in the title of the event and presumably responsible for the content, is one of the oldest exit games going – second in the UK only to HintHunt, this site believes – so there’s a fine pedigree.

The price and context are about as neat as it gets. The island of Ireland, on both sides of the border, is very much punching above its weight in terms of having exciting (if sometimes short-lived) games going on. Kudos to the Den collective for having the creativity to schedule the event. It should deliver great results all round: good for the festival, good for Escap3d and certainly good for everyone who gets the chance to play.

This site loves exit games, but it also loves interesting public games, particularly if they strongly have the puzzle nature. This initiative brings exit games and interactive theatre closer together than ever before, and this site hopes that it will be the first example of many.