EVANSTON — The premise is simple. You’re in prison and you have but one chance at freedom — escape. 

Doing so will take ingenuity and creativity. It will take cooperation with your fellow inmates. It will take utilizing all available tools and resources.

You have one hour.

That is the story line of the first room at Evanston’s newest entertainment venue, isolvu Escape Room. 

Themed escape rooms have exploded in popularity in recent years. As isolvu owner Maggie Jones explains, “It’s like in a movie where there are clues and puzzles to solve to escape, but you’re the main actor.” 

For Jones, escape rooms have become a favorite pastime since participating in her first one in Salt Lake City several years ago. She and her husband Greg now make it a point to visit escape rooms when they travel and have now successfully completed about 50. 

Part of the fun is that it’s absolutely necessary to work with others to escape, which is also part of the popularity of escape rooms. The experiences can be booked for everything from date nights to birthday parties to team-building exercises for businesses. 

Maggie said the idea of opening an escape room in Evanston is one she’s been thinking on for a few years but began actively pursuing last summer. She secured the location at 927 Main Street in November and since that time construction crews have been hard at work creating the three different themed rooms to be found at isolvu.

The name, isolvu, came from some online searching Maggie did to find foreign language words meaning “solve.” The word “isolvu,” according to Google translate, is actually Maltese for solve. Jones said she chose that word because it’s not only a literal translation in itself, but also is interpreted as “I solve you,” demonstrating confidence in cracking the codes and escaping. 

In addition to the prison break theme, another room will be based on an Alice in Wonderland theme and a final room on a haunted cabin theme. The Alice room will be open the first week of May and the haunted cabin this summer, hopefully by June, said Jones. 

In each room there are multiple challenges and puzzles to solve, working together in a group, while the one-hour clock is ticking. “You really have to think differently than even a board game,” said Jones. “Getting out depends on thinking outside of the box and observational skills.” 

Jones said the overall themes of the rooms likely won’t change very often because of the amount of work involved in creating detailed sets for an immersive experience. She writes all the clues and the puzzles herself and goes to great lengths to do research to make the experience as realistic as possible “When writing a game, you’re actually creating the world around it,” she said. 

It’s a balancing act to create a just-right game, said Jones. “The goal is to be able to solve it,” she said. “You want it challenging but not too hard, and one big thing about escape rooms is you don’t want to need outside knowledge to get out. Everything you need to solve it is in the game with you.” 

Although the themes will likely remain the same, it is possible to change the clues and puzzles within the themes to keep the games fresh. 

In addition, she said she has multiple portable games that can be taken to other locations for a traveling escape room experience. Jones said eventually she hopes to be able to purchase a trailer for the traveling games. 

Jones said she believes her escape room business is the sixth in Wyoming, and she hopes it will help draw tourists to the area, folks who, like herself, will go a bit out of their way to take in a challenging and detailed game. 

Jones, an active member of the community, said they have used local businesses for building supplies and construction work, and have found other downtown business owners invaluable throughout the process of getting isolvu up and running. 

She said the prison break room has been successfully beaten by many groups now, with the youngest participant being 10 years old. “He loved it,” she said. It requires a minimum of two people to play, with a maximum of eight at a time. 

Jones said bookings can be made online at www.isolvu.com, and those who would like to play but don’t have a group can still book and join other people to play. 

Maggie, who acts as game master and monitors all the games via video as they unfold, said it’s entertaining to see all of the individual skills and connections people bring into the experiences. “Married couples tend to do really well together,” she said. “It’s really fun to see people at different stages of relationships.”