Red Bull Escape Room World Championship
Slovakian team Brainteaselava were crowned Red Bull Escape Room world champions on Saturday after 22 teams flew into London for two days of battle at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere. Here is all you need to know:
– After the success of the inaugural 2017 Red Bull Escape Room World Championship in Budapest, the sharpest mind gamers from the likes of the UK, Australia, Germany, India, USA and Brazil qualified in their respective countries before the London semi-finals on Friday where teams undertook three custom built 10-minute challenges to determine the two fastest.
– Brainteaselava and Croatian team TG 170 then took on ‘Omni’s Escape’ in the final, the world’s most challenging never-before-seen escape room purpose built by mastermind Dr Scott Nicholson.
– The final room was four rooms designed to test participants in six problem solving skills: creativity, logic, visual thinking, musicality, memory and strategy.
– Brainteaselava were crowned the world champions after completing ‘Omni’s Escape’ in just 27 minutes and 16 seconds – more than 10 minutes faster than TG 170 – thanks to the efforts of Emil Haas, Daniela Králiková, Michal Burger and Martin Králik.
– Haas said: “It’s amazing. We haven’t been world champions yet so it’s a great feeling. We didn’t know what to expect. We weren’t sure how well we did and the other team was really strong, but in the end it turns out we were the fastest!”
– Dominik Erbeznik from TG 170 said: “We are pretty satisfied. We came up short but we had a lot of fun and they deserved it – they were a better team.”
– Nicholson explained: “With the World Finals this year we tackled an ethical question, does AI have rights? Omni is an AI agent that wants to leave White Hat Laboratories and we hope that players will think about this when they order their devices around! We also reduced the cultural bias around the escape room so that everyone had a chance to win.”
Red Bull Escape Room World Championship Final times:
1. Slovakia – 27:16:85
2. Croatia – 38:06:25
Red Bull Escape Room World Championship Semi-Final times:
1. Croatia – 21:57:23
2. Slovakia – 23:26:19
3. Belgium – 23:34:91
4. UK – 23:42:63
5. Estonia – 23:42:98
6. Greece – 24:09:61
7. Latvia – 24:25:85
8. France – 24:44:23
9. USA – 25:06:98
10. Wildcard – 25:44:74
11. Brazil – 25:51:62
12. Switzerland – 26:08:06
13. Germany – 26:34:20
14. Portugal – 26:36:07
15. Ukraine – 27:31:26
16. Lithuania – 27:43:93
17. Slovenia – 27:58:80
18. Austria – 28:03:13
19. Turkey – 28:04:05
20. India – 28:32:08
21. Australia – 20:08:41
22. Russia – 29:38:93
