Near the Shop ‘n Save at the Harvester plaza, there’s a new, different way to have fun with your friends. What’s this place, you may ask? Cracked! It’s a place where you get locked into a room and you have an hour to try to escape. by collecting clues and cracking codes. The escape room cost $25 per person. Check them out at http://www.crackedstl.com

You have been added to Santa’s “Naughty List” and need to be removed from it.

You’ve managed to find your way into Santa’s office.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to erase your name off of the list.

You have 60 minutes to complete your mission.

Or the elves will find you.

Good luck.

A new Christmas escape mission at Cracked opened on Nov. 17. Cracked, located on Caulks Hill Road, is an escape house where a group of up to 10 people are locked into a room, and are given a certain period of time to discover hidden clues and riddles and to solve puzzles in order to escape from within the room. Customers are locked into Santa’s “office,” and must look for clues hidden around the office to help them remove their names off of Santa’s Naughty List.

“I would go back and take my friends because it’s a lot of fun and I would like to see what a different room would be like,” senior Marygrace Cole said.

Cracked has been open for approximately two months and has already had between 400 and 500 customers come through and attempt to crack the interactive, live-action game by solving the riddles and puzzles that the participants are challenged with.

“I [opened] another escape room somewhere else and it was fun,” owner of Cracked Aaron Cockrell said. “There weren’t any in this area so I started one.”

The first escape room to open at Cracked was the jailhouse mission, which Cockrell describes as a linear puzzle, meaning that there is a specific order that the clues must be found in order to make sense. However, the Christmas mission can be solved by starting in multiple different places rather than just one fixed point.

“There was a simplicity to it that I didn’t expect,” Cole said, “It was really hard, don’t get me wrong, but the room itself was so simple. The puzzles were extremely hard but the room wasn’t some complex dungeon to solve.”

In both escape missions, participants are given 60 minutes to break out of their cell or room using clues hidden around the room.

“I like watching those “ah-ha” moments when something clicks in their head and that moment of satisfaction they get,” Cockrell said.

If the participants are stuck on what to do next, they can request hints through   a walkie-talkie in the room to help them crack the puzzles. As of press time, only about 20-25 percent of people have escaped from the jailhouse without using any hints, while around 50 percent of people escaped with hints. Thus far, a team called the “Legal Illegals” hold the record for the fastest time at 47 minutes and four seconds leftover.

“It is narrowing down focus when you don’t know where to go,” Cockrell said. “Everyone has got different ideas and it’s deciding who to go with. It’s about discussing the plan of action to decide the best way.”

Cracked entertains ages of all kinds, from 10-year-olds to adults. In addition to the two escape rooms already open, Cockrell plans to keep adding on new missions, and open a third room for Cracked at the beginning of January.

“I think I will go if I have the chance because it will be thrilling and fun to figure out the clues,” senior Emma Kostelecky said.

Cockrell is looking into finding new locations to house more escape rooms, while the current rooms and puzzles may be changed on a cycle.

“I feel like I would be more ready because I know what it’s like,” Cole said. “It was a lot of fun and I would love to go back.”