“Pop Quiz, hotshot: you find yourself locked in a room with a handful of strangers with only a handful of clues and a few minutes to escape, what do you do? What do you do?”

(Video is of a Los Angeles Escape Room)

In the voice of Dennis Hopper circa Speed-era: “Pop Quiz, hotshot: you find yourself locked in a room with a handful of strangers with only a handful of clues and a few minutes to escape, what do you do? What do you do?”

Just in time for the Halloween season, there’s finally a better seasonal alternative to the tired Haunted House gambit. Because, let’s be honest, getting ‘accidentally’ felt-up by a dude wearing the Scream mask just isn’t what it used to be.

Instead, we have ‘Escape Rooms,’ the virally trendy new craze that began in Europe and has started popping up around Denver in recent months.

The ‘rooms’ provide people with sort of social and interactive puzzle. Once locked inside, the goal is for participants to solve the unique puzzle and escape. Hidden inside of the confines of the rooms are subtle clues, tools and riddles necessary for success. The "Great Room Escape" at the 13th Floor Haunted House in Denver, is one of the more frequented Escape Rooms in town, featuring a variety of horror themes.

The ‘Zombie Theme,’ for example, essentially locks 12 people (strangers or a larger group of friends) together in a single room. To add to the ambience there are zombies chained to the surrounding walls just out of reach. The players are given one hour to find clues and answer riddles in hopes of finding a key to breakout.

The themes cover everything from the aforementioned zombie room, to a timed-bomb scenario in which participants have one hour to diffuse it using only the clues at hand, and even a ‘heist’ scenario where the goal is to discover and get away with ‘a precious coin,’ with its own set of hindrances and mysteries according to Fox31.

The cost of the different escape room scenarios varies around $25 to $40 per person per hour, but look at it this way: you’ll be so strung out on your own adrenaline when you’re done that you won’t even need to eat after, thus saving you money and trimming your waistline.

Other escape rooms in Denver include: Puzzah, Denver Escape Room, The Clue Room, Epic Escape Room, and the Great Room Escape.

So, there you have it, folks: if being screamed at and fondled by a masked stranger or bumbling through a bumpkin-ass corn maze isn’t your thing, at least there’s another option on the table this October.