Meet ER Champ

Idea

From the very beginning, our main goal when organizing the championship has been to promote the idea of escape rooms among players enthusiastic about puzzles and riddles, as well as raise interest among those who have never had any contact with this type of entertainment before. We want to infect as many people as possible with the passion of escaping from puzzle rooms. Our games - despite not being the easiest - garner interest from players across all levels of experience.

History

ER Champ, previously Poland Escape (the name of the competition for the first three editions), has been held annually since 2017. The first edition attracted 1,767 participants. The competition was held in a format consisting of 3 stages: online qualifications, a regional stage, and a grand final in Wrocław. Except for the first edition, the initial qualifications have always been a cooperative point-and-click game, with all participants playing at the same time. The best teams move on to the next stage. This was the regional stage, which took place in real, physical escape rooms, built specifically for the occasion. The grand final, which crowned the competition, was always a true celebration of escape rooms.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the championship had moved to the Internet in 2020. The next three editions were held completely online. Although the contestants could not compete in real, stationary escape rooms, the undeniable advantage of the 2020-2022 editions was the growing number of international teams. We are proud to say that the online editions of ER Champ were played by teams from every continent (except Antarctica).

The 2022 edition of ER Champ brought several innovations. The first of these was the establishment of the Program Team. This experimental step turned out to be a hit - a team of puzzle enthusiasts, whom you can see on the Program Team page, helped create one of the best player-rated editions in the history of our competitions.

Another novelty was the live streams before each stage of the competition, which were watched by hundreds of viewers. We are glad that you gave such a warm welcome to our hosts, Olga and Paweł, who said a bit about the history of ER Champ and the current edition. We'll definitely want to repeat this for future championships!

In 2023 we returned to running a live, in-person part of the competition. We took up the gauntlet and, in addition to the online qualifications, we organized the final of the competition in Wrocław for the top 10 teams. Live coverage of the event was viewed by more than 20,000 people from around the world. Competitors struggled with two 20-minute escape room scenarios.