“Code Green” has the makings 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 surrounding us: patterns on the walls, a cork board full of notes and pictures tied together with strings, and, in front of us, on what appears to be a concrete table , a small puzzle board with several of his twisted characters. parts – something akin to strange otherworldly tools – are missing.
The current trend is for escape rooms with a loaded narrative – see “The ladder” of Hatch Escapes in Los Angeles, a decades-long corporate mystery — and “Code Green” knows it. 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 turn this off.
But it quickly becomes clear that “Code Green” is not your typical escape room. The walls? Cardboard, with paper bricks glued to it. The low ceiling? It is made of construction paper. Hanging blankets create the boundaries of space. If you separate them, you’ll find yourself in a cluttered corner where a desk rests on a bunk bed next to a wall filled with posters, including one of musician Andrew Bird.
The escape room industry has exploded over the past decade, with about 2,000 installations in the United States, according to a 2023 study. industry report from Room Escape Artist, an enthusiast site that maintains an ongoing database of every known room in the country.
But “Code Green” isn’t one of them, because “Code Green” is built in a dorm on the UCLA campus by a 21-year-old. Tyler Neufelda theater major with a specific interest in design. It’s comfortable: four people can’t navigate space without constantly moving around each other. Yet for the past eight months, Neufeld, a Bakersfield native, has been running the free service “Green code” escape game for his fellow students and their friends while juggling 22 units, his role as a resident advisor, and a part-time job as an office assistant. On a recent Sunday, he hosted three 60-minute games.
When I visit on a Wednesday evening, the bespectacled Neufeld is nervous. He emphasizes that the “Green Code” is intended only for students, registrations being done via an online spreadsheet. Participants, he said, need a UCLA email address. While he doesn’t hide the escape room, he says his resident advisor office and teachers are aware and he posts “Code Green” availability updates on his “Dormitory Landscapes” Instagram – he was not officially sanctioned by the school. He is aware that press attention could put an end to it (a UCLA spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment).
UCLA student Tyler Neufeld gives a tour of his escape room, which he built inside his dorm room. Neufeld lives alone as a resident advisor and is expected to graduate in June.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
But after a while, he shrugs and says, “It’s worth it,” clearly wanting some recognition for what he’s built.
“What happens if they shut us down?” It’s good. We’ve come this far,” adds Michaela Duarte, 26, another theater student who has done production designs on the space.
Although 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, there may also be a little fun managing something of quasi-professional quality in a dorm room. .
Most of the puzzles in “Code Green” are text-based: a note in a research book can lead us to a cipher challenge, which in turn will reveal a card, which is actually a code to decipher the hidden motive of the recorded cardboard. bricks. Delete the correct one and find another note.
Neufeld, or one of his friends, acts as a “game master,” hiding in the closet pretending to research aliens while offering clues, which may be verbal or written on the back of the book. a television screen supported by cardboard.
Neufeld estimates that he built the piece for less than $100 and that it is constructed entirely from found or destroyed objects. “I have experience in student theater, where they don’t give you any dollars,” he said. “I wanted to think about what I had and what was passable. I didn’t want to go too far into science fiction, like being in a spaceship. It would look bad. But I can make stone. I can make bricks. It’s not difficult. It just takes time.
Spend some time playing “Code Green” and you’ll spot additional clues that this is a dorm. That concrete table slab we see when we first walk in? It turns out to be Neufeld’s refrigerator, filled not with clues but with items like oat milk. (Duarte affixed painted Styrofoam to the body of the refrigerator, giving it an aged metallic sheen.) Same with the dresser, although Neufeld noticed that people couldn’t help but rummage through his clothes, he so there are notes in the story.
Some puzzles in “Code Green” 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 the drawers to be empty,” Neufeld says of keeping her clothes accessible to guests. “It’s the same way I play with the refrigerator. It’s very campy. …We all know it’s a dorm. No need to go for 100% immersion when you can have a little fun.
Set designer Andy Broomell, a lecturer at UCLA who teaches Neufeld in one of his drawing classes, heard about “Code Green.” “My first reaction was, ‘I’d love to do that,'” he says, although he stresses that it’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’re passionate about,” Broomell said.
“Code Green” has evolved significantly since its debut last semester, and Neufeld, who will graduate in June, is preparing to move on. He has his second escape room in his dorm, for next semester, currently being planned. He’s planning something lighter: a heist game involving squirrels.
Neufeld says the idea to build an escape room in his dorm came to him in the middle of the night, but it also grew out of this life as a solo resident advisor: “I felt alone,” says- he.
“It was definitely one of those 2 a.m. ideas. I thought, “I have to do this.” I can’t pass up this opportunity. Basically, it’s a free room – yes, I work as a (resident advisor) to get this space – but if I had to rent space after college, I think it would be a lot more difficult. That night it was 2 a.m. and I started blocking him,” Neufeld said.
UCLA student Tyler Neufeld wonders if there’s a future in murals that double as puzzles. Here he is next to his work “Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work,” a series of painted challenges he created in a dorm room stairwell.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
It’s safe to say that “Code Green” helped Neufeld find his tribe. For L Siswanto, 21, an education student who helps Neufeld organize matches, 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 IRL because they’re super expensive, but I had a phase where I was obsessed with playing every possible escape room on the App Store (d ‘Apple). So when I saw there was a free escape room and they were looking for members to help me, I was like, “Wow.” I love this stuff.’
In total, 10 students are now contributing, either by improving production or managing the Instagram account. Duarte joined the project partly inspired by Neufeld’s conviction, impressed by the fact that he never shied away from anything potentially illicit or left-of-center.
“When Tyler had the idea to build an escape room in his dorm, (I thought) this was crazy,” Duarte says. “But it’s really cool and 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 so.
“Code Green” helped UCLA student Tyler Neufeld, center, find his tribe. He now has about 10 people helping him in the escape room, including Michaela Duarte, left, and L Siswanto.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
There are times when Neufeld admits he wishes his dorm room was complete, such as when he has to crawl under a hanging cardboard box to reach his bed, but his entrepreneurial brain is also thriving. He wonders if there is a career opportunity creating wall puzzles, perhaps for bars or cafes. (He also has one, painted in a stairwell of a nearby dorm and titled “Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work.” It’s self-guided, meaning there’s no need to have a game master, and is a separate entity from “Code Vert.”)
Additionally, building the escape room sparked a passion for creating environments and he hopes to pursue a career in the theme park industry. It also broadened his definition of theater.
“It’s basically a one-act, one-hour play,” Neufeld explains. “But the set is all around you and the audience is your actors. It’s an extension of the theater.
Neufeld is fine-tuning a Zoom-based edition of “Code Green,” hoping the videoconferencing service could help introduce it to non-students. But despite the interest on campus, living in a dorm as a resident advisor keeps him humble. Neufeld laughs when asked what his neighbors think, revealing that he tried to recruit his housing peers to come play via 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 simple as building your own escape.
