Long Island escape room enthusiasts – and those looking for a fun way to get off their phones – have a new challenge.
After designing dozens and solving hundreds, best friends and escape room aficionados Dakota ‘Cody’ Oher and Ryan Clifford are opening RYCO’s, their own immersive, high-tech escape room center with a restaurant, bar and lounge in Westbury’s Samanea Mall.
The two said they’re passionate about escape rooms, which involve a group of people going into a locked room that they must collaboratively solve a series of puzzles to escape from. Escape rooms bring people together and get them off their phones.
“It’s something a little bit different and unique, where people can actually enjoy each other’s company, as opposed to passively participating in something, like watching a movie,” Oher said. “Our biggest passion point is just having an opportunity to have an activity that people can do together and actually enjoy each other’s company, challenge each other and work together. An escape room is the perfect platform for that.”
The two met working at Onteora Scout Reservation, a Boy Scout camp upstate in Livingston Manor, where Oher was the camp director and Clifford was the program director. After traveling around and solving escape rooms together for a few years, the two spent around four years designing escape rooms for the scouts.
“We’ve gone to about 250 escape rooms,” Oher said. “We noticed a bit of a gap in the market on Long Island, so we really wanted to kind of go full tilt and bring some of those really immersive experiences here.”
RYCO’s, a combination of the friends’ names, currently has four uniquely immersive escape rooms which range in difficulty.
The current hardest is RYCO’s Island, which has about a 50% escape rate, followed by Asylum, with about a 60% escape rate. The easiest is Dreams Work, based loosely on Monster Inc. and featuring oversized games, which has a roughly 70% escape rate.
The fourth room, Titanic, asks players to navigate moving floors and real steam to escape a doomed voyage. It hasn’t been open long enough for the two to get a good sense of the escape rate. They said they hope to create up to three more rooms.
In case of an emergency, Oher said there’s always an unlocked exit door and a gamemaster who watches the group attempt to solve the puzzles through a camera. Players can ask an unlimited number of questions as they work through the game, though he said some elect to forgo any hints at all.
To support their goal of getting people talking and collaborating, the friends have equipped their space with a bar and restaurant lounge that serves a wide range of primarily shareable foods, cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks.
Oher said everyone is welcome in the rooms, though they recommend people be over the age of 12 to get the most out of them. He said they typically see groups of students, couples on date nights, corporate team-building nights, birthday parties, families, and friend groups.
The cost to enter the escape room is $45 per person for groups of three or fewer. For groups of four or more, each person will be billed $40, and for groups over 12, Oher said each person would pay $38.
While RYCO’s has been operating with limited hours as the two have been finishing up construction of some rooms since the late fall, last Tuesday, May 27, was their first official day.
Now, those looking to give the games a try can visit RYCO’s from Tuesday through Thursday from 3:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
