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Oh no, they fail to save Princess Peach

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The odds were stacked against my friends and me. The evil Bowser was staring us down, and we only had an hour to rescue Princess Peach and escape Bowser’s grasp.

The endless hours we had played on our Nintendo 64 consoles as children had finally led to this moment: It was our turn to save the Mushroom Kingdom.

Except instead of being immersed in the actual video game, we were trapped in a room in the Diamond Jamboree Shopping Plaza in Irvine.

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The room, adorned in “Super Mario Bros.” decor, is one of two themed rooms at Square Room Escape, where participants have an hour to solve clues, figure out puzzles and find their way through a locked door.

My friend Bayli, boyfriend Kristofer and I raced against the clock to solve puzzles, figure out riddles and complete math equations.

We each threw out crazy ideas and used knowledge gained from hours of playing the game as children to help our attempt.

Still, knowing what each Yoshi’s purpose was or how to attack Goombas didn’t help us.

After an hour, the timer went off and the door was still locked. The Bowser poster on the back wall was still staring, and I could imagine him laughing. All the while I was saying “Oh no” in my mind in my best Mario impersonation.

Although we were frustrated that we lost — sorry for failing you, Princess Peach — we still had fun.

“I liked how many challenges required you to use a controller,” Kristofer said after the timer had run out. “It fit the ‘Mario’ theme nicely. But I’m also glad it didn’t require jumping into blocks or jumping over a large gap of water. The puzzles were enough like ‘Mario’ that it felt like the games.”

That immersive experience is something that Square Room Escape founders Mike Lou and Ryan King believe sets their business apart from other escape rooms.

Over the past few years, escape rooms have popped up all around the world, giving participants the chance to solve puzzles and mysteries within a set amount of time.

Square Room Escape, which opened in July, is light-hearted compared with other setups that focus on the horror genre and murder mysteries. This makes the experience friendly for all ages, although the target audience is teenagers and young adults.

King said Square Room Escape’s two rooms, which currently have “Super Mario Bros.” and “Harry Potter” themes, are also throwbacks to childhood for many of its attendees.

“I was the guy who stood in line for the ‘Harry Potter’ books and watched all the movies at midnight,” said the 26-year-old Rowland Heights resident. “It’s something I think people can relate to, and it’s part of our childhood. ‘Super Mario Bros.’ is also nostalgic for us. We played it a lot as kids.”

Lou, 26, of Corona, said he was first introduced to the escape room concept in Asia a few years ago. After gaining a biomedical engineering degree from UC Irvine in 2010, he decided to build an escape room of his own in his home for friends to try.

He said his engineering background and King’s computer science degree helped in developing the technology aspect of the experience, but they still had a lot to learn to get the rooms to function properly.

“Personally, I had never used a power drill before, and now we’re both pretty proficient with it,” King said. “We did have a little bit of an advantage with what we were doing in school and before this, but a lot of it was our passion for wanting to make it pretty cool and immersive.”

Unlike the “Mario” room, which is fairly linear, the “Harry Potter” room is more complicated because the clues don’t exactly follow one another.

King and Lou said that while the rooms are especially fun for fans of the franchises, they are enjoyable for just about anyone. No familiarity with the characters or extra knowledge are needed to escape the room.

Lou and King said they plan to switch out the themes every six to eight months and hope to expand to more locations that can provide bigger spaces for their escape rooms.

“The physical reality of it is probably the thing that makes it the most popular,” King said. “A lot of people nowadays are on their phones or playing on computers, so this provides an activity that they can physically do. At the same time, it challenges your brain and mind, and for people who love trying to solve things, that’s one of the biggest draws. It really immerses you into the experience.”

As we finally exited the Square Room Escape building, my friends and I felt as if we had just left another world. Like Mario, our quest was now over. But the questions we had — how could we have done things differently to save the princess? — did not vanish by us simply stomping on them like a Goomba.

Soon enough, we’ll probably press the reset button and try again.

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IF YOU GO:

What: Square Room Escape

Where: 2710 Alton Pkwy., No. 209, Irvine

When: 11 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. daily (reservations required)

Cost: $32 for each room

Infomation: squareroomescape.com

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