Escape Copenhagen was founded in 2014. The idea was born during a lunch between the three friends, Ulrik, Martin, and Andreas. Shortly before, Andreas had returned from a trip to London, where he discovered Escape Games' growing popularity.
The idea appealed to all three of us because of the prospect of giving people the opportunity to have fun together in an active and challenging way. In addition, this was a concept we had already worked with for other startup ideas.
After the idea was planted, it was impossible to let it go. In an old shipyard building on Refshaleøen, we found a location. Its old industrial look created a perfect venue for our first game, Tower Escape, which was created with flee-marked items, cooperation, and lots of creativity. Ulrik created a webpage, and since the demand for challenging and intelligent entertainment turned out to be big, the bookings came more or less by themselves. Thus, it did not take long before it was clear that Escape Games in Copenhagen was a market worth investigating further.
In the spring of 2015, the demand seemed to keep growing, and we decided to go all-in. We rented a large basement on Nørre Farimagsgade 7 in the center of Copenhagen. Here we could offer customers a more centrally located Escape Game close to one of the main stations, Nørreport Station. In April of 2015, we opened our first current game, The Psychotic Janitor, at this location.
The new location had room for more games, so we both took leave from our full-time job as consultants. Together with Ulrik, we built the games The Terrorist's Cell, which opened in August 2015, and The Solitary Monk that was ready in December of that year.
In 2016, we had both returned to our nine-to-five jobs, but almost all spare time was still used to refine the games with the help from Ulrik and customer feedback.
Through 2016, the interest and the demand for intelligent entertainment grew rapidly. Towards the end of the year, we had so many people attempting to book games that we could not meet demand. Therefore, we decided it was time to expand.
In January 2017, with inspiration from a research trip to Budapest (The European Escape Game capital), we were able to open the doors to Cosmos, the first Virtual Reality Escape Game in Denmark.
It all started to look like something that could actually be made a living of. We even discovered that we both got more value from creating fun experiences for others than from our nine-to-five jobs. So, we decided to quit them definitively and devote all our working hours to Escape Copenhagen.