Over recent years, a certain type of game has enjoyed big popularity: games where a player has to escape from a room using only their wits and the items available to them.These kinds of game owe their origins to text-based adventures of the 1980s, as well as adventure puzzle games like Myst, Riven, and the Monkey Island series. As time went by, it became possible for games of this kind to be published online, and then playable online. One criticism of the early CD-ROM adventure puzzlers was that while they were visually impressive, they were too expansive and unfocussed, which led to them becoming boring.So, developers began to narrow the scope of their games to smaller environments, and then to a single room. Locked-room games are easy to make, but they require subtlety and elegance. But there are plenty of escape games to choose from, so itâs worth looking at the most popular of them.Nowadays, a few things characterize the escape-room genre. There are usually few, if any, characters other than the player. This helps to contribute to a sense of loneliness and urgency, as itâs difficult to feel as though you have to escape when thereâs someone with you. Spooky ambient music also makes things even more tense.Most of these games take a first-person perspective, which removes the need for the playerâs character to be drawn, and allows the developer to focus on whatâs really important: the environment and the puzzles. Escape games have been so popular that theyâve spawned a craze for real-life escape rooms across the world â but you donât need to travel to a physical location to enjoy them.If youâre looking to indulge in a little escape-the-room fun, youâll find plenty of suitable HTML5 games here. Simply pick the one youâd like to play, and plan your escape!