Hostage
Hostage is an immersive escape room team building activity designed to get people thinking and collaborating. We can set up and run it anywhere, your office, conference or meeting room from 6 to 100+ players.Â
Hostage: Indoor Escape Room Activity
Picture this. The screen in your conference or meeting room crackles and a masked kidnapper appears on screen. So does your boss. They’ve been taken hostage and its up to you to crack the codes, solve the puzzles and locate them before time runs out.
The experience is built around a single question: how far will your team go to free the boss before the clock hits zero?
Each team gets a locked case and 90 minutes on the clock. The first clue plays on the main screen — a cipher that, once cracked, opens the case.
Inside is everything teams need to keep going, and everything they need to keep guessing. The phases unfold one inside the next – a mix of jigsaws, morse code, decoders, blacklight reveals and more – until the final clue frees your boss.
Crack the codes. Free the boss. Reap the rewards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Prior to the event, our team works with you to set up the custom video. We brief your chosen “hostage” — usually the boss, sometimes a senior leader or a beloved colleague — and send a short script outline for their ransom message.
They film 30 seconds on their phone and send it across. Our team edits it into a scripted opening sequence with kidnapper voiceover, sound design and titles, so by the time the event runs, the room sees a familiar face starring in their own mini action film.
We’ll also confirm group size, AV requirements, room layout and timing so everything’s ready to go on the day.
Teams race the clock and they race each other. Our facilitators move between tables, giving nudges, theatre and the occasional curveball where needed. The result is a high-energy puzzle team building experience that gets every brain in the room working — and gets them working together.
Hostage is built around the team building outcomes that are crucial for collaboration and genuine teamwork:
- Communication under pressure: Teams that don’t talk don’t escape.
- Leadership emergence: Quiet operators tend to surprise everyone, including themselves, when the clock is ticking.
- Problem-solving across disciplines: Logic, language, lateral thinking and pattern recognition — there’s a moment for every brain in the room.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Mixed teams have to delegate, trust and back each other to finish in time.
It’s problem solving team building at full tilt, with a narrative wrapper that keeps everyone invested.
Hostage runs in any indoor room — your own office, a boardroom, a hotel function space or a conference ballroom. We bring the locked cases, props, puzzles and tech; you provide the room, a screen or projector, and basic AV.
Set-up takes about 15 minutes; pack-down about 10. The activity is ideal for conferences (perfect for half-day breakouts), end-of-year parties, leadership offsites, team retreats and any group that’s outgrown the standard 6-person escape room.
You can also check out other indoor team activity options here.
We’ve also highlighted some of our most successful indoor team activities here.
Need another location? Chat with our team and we can tailor the activity to suit your preferred location or venue.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
- Sydney, Melbourne + More Locations
- 2 hours
- 10-200
- Outdoors
- Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane + More Locations
- 2 hours
- 10-100
- Outdoors