At the end of November, the grand finale of the ER Champ 2024 World Championship in escape room gaming took place in Prague, organised for the 8th consecutive year by the popular escape room booking portal Lock.me. After the June online qualifiers, where 658 teams from around the world competed, the top 10 teams faced off against the Great Constructor in the final, aiming to free captives from the television world in a real escape room game!

The Story and the Game

This year, the competitors and ambassadors collectively chose the leading story: The TV Maniac. The protagonists, Diana and Arthur, were so engrossed in binge watching TV series that they literally “fell in” – they were sucked into the world of television. During the online qualifiers, which were free to participate in and attracted 2,044 players from all continents – including participants from Slovenia –competitors had to rescue them from the TV world. Diana and Arthur had to locate and activate a remote control, solve challenging puzzles and travel between TV channels. By the end of the qualifiers, they discovered that the mastermind behind their adventure was the Great Constructor, who had captured many others in his world.

In the finals, where the top 10 teams from the qualifiers competed in real, specially designed escape rooms, Diana and Arthur returned to free all the captives. Two 30-minute real-life, thematic and exceptionally witty escape games were prepared, allowing competitors to journey into the world of the Great Constructor, where everything was different!

Aftermovie – a video summary of the event

A new sport discipline?

In an interview during the event’s livestream (you can watch the championship livestream here) our Nataša Potočnik, the ER CHAMP ambassador for Slovenia, mentioned that it’s truly incredible how quickly playing escape room games has evolved into a genuine new sport discipline!

Teams, often composed of the same members for years, hone their skills by visiting escape rooms around the globe, constantly seeking more challenging puzzles.

There are very few disciplines where players must combine speed, problem-solving ability, logical and analytical skills, strategic thinking, communication and motor skills. Both physical and mental abilities are crucial. It’s an entirely new category of “athletes”!

PS: Enigmarium’s Nataša and Peter also took the opportunity during their visit to Prague to play their 300th escape room game.

The World Champions of ER CHAMP 2024 are…

Congratulations to the teams on the official ER CHAMP 2024 leaderboard:

  1. 6 Keys (US)
  2. United Discord (US)
  3. Les Wyrds (FR)
  4. CKCOS (TW)
  5. Poziomki i Elo (PL)
  6. Escapinality (US)
  7. Duże Gumowe Pterodaktyle (PL)
  8. Merkantylizm (PL)
  9. Peeposad (PL)
  10. La Compagnie Keyhole (CA)

World Champions 2024
This year’s champion title was claimed by the American team 6 Keys – the only team to successfully complete both final rooms – TV Remote and TV Universe Core. This is their second appearance in the final. Last year they took 3rd place. Congratulations on this outstanding achievement! It was a very close competition, as victory narrowly slipped away from the American team United Discord. All teams truly deserve a massive round of applause!

Thank you! 

Prague hosted the final at the beautiful Fun Arena center, which impressed everyone with its magical steampunk ambiance. There, both players and visitors were well taken care of with 1980s gaming consoles, VR rooms and cyber arcade games. Even more delightful was meeting escape room enthusiasts from around the world and chatting about the best escape rooms, trends in the escape room industry, networking and the TERPECA ranking!

So once again, a big thank you to the tireless organisers from the LOCK.ME platform – and to every individual in this huge production team who works hard every year to make escape room games increasingly popular. Today, playing escape room games is becoming a competitive discipline. It’s also growing in importance for tourism. Often, visiting an exceptional escape room is the sole reason for travelling to the most remote corners of the world. We are happy that the number of real escapists and escape room enthusiasts grows every year. Next year, we hope to see Slovenians in the final and, someday in the future, we hope to host the final in Slovenia!