Aurora

We played AURORA in Beijing as the second-to-last of the 57 adventures on our journey through six Chinese cities. It turned out to be the only game on the entire trip that was fully playable in English, actor interactions included. It was also one of the few non-horror games we experienced in China, and unlike many of the other games on our trip, AURORA places a strong emphasis on puzzles and active player participation.

AURORA was created by a two-person team: Kuan and his wife, who started out as escape room players themselves. From the initial idea to the finished game, the project took more than two years to develop, including extensive work on the story, puzzles, mechanics and 3D construction. The first version opened in 2023 under the name “Go! Battle the Dragon,” but after extensive player feedback and a major rework, it was relaunched as AURORA later that year. The English version opened in Beijing in November 2025 and has been running there ever since, while the Shanghai English version launched in July 2026.

What makes AURORA’s success even more remarkable is how sustained it has been. From the second half of 2025, foot traffic for the game in Shanghai surged, and for six straight months AURORA held the number one spot by visitor numbers on both Meituan and Dianping, China’s two leading platforms for reviews and local services. It’s reportedly the only escape room theme in Chinese history whose attendance kept climbing after nearly two years in operation, rather than tapering off, and the only mechanics-focused, non-horror room ever to top Shanghai’s hot list, and the awards it picked up along the way tell the same story: EGA National Gold for Best Fun Experience in 2023, followed by a clean sweep at the EGA Shanghai awards the same year, taking home Triple Gold for Best Escape Game, Best Mechanical & Visual Effects, and Best Fun Experience.

Story-wise, AURORA doesn’t give much away before you book, and that’s clearly by design. The premise you’re handed is simple: you’re warriors who’ve stumbled into a fairytale kingdom, and you have to help a disheartened princess find the courage for one last battle against an evil dragon. The venue’s own intro poem sets the tone rather than the plot, framing the game as a legend you step into through a magic door, in a realm called Theos, where you’re cast as the princess’s vanguard, knights called on to face the dark and unfold your “true power.”

Once inside, the game earns that setup properly. A puzzle in the palace corridor buys you passage into a giant storybook titled The Princess and the Dragon, which opens on the line “this is a true story that never happened.”

From there you’re dropped straight into a family argument between the King and Princess: a dragon has all but conquered the kingdom, and an oracle has named her the only one who can end it, despite ninety-nine campaigns lost in a row. The King brings you in so she won’t face the hundredth alone. She’s still hesitant until her childhood friend, Sir Big-Nose Monkey, works out why she keeps losing: not a lack of skill, but three curses the dragon has quietly placed on her. Encouraged, she agrees to go again, “win or lose, this will be my last campaign.”

What follows is built as three chapters, each pairing a puzzle challenge with breaking one curse. Break all three, and the door to the War Command Post opens for the final battle, where the dragon’s actual secret gets revealed, and that’s exactly where we’re drawing the line, since finding it out for yourself is half the point.

Puzzle-wise, AURORA follows one rule its creators call non-negotiable: puzzles have to be woven into the story, never “the story is the story, and the puzzle is the puzzle.” Nothing about the room feels bolted on for the sake of having a puzzle there; every mechanism is doing double duty as plot device.

That philosophy runs deeper than a nice line, too. Behind AURORA is a genuine belief that escape rooms should let players drive the story forward themselves, through solving, interacting with actors, and operating mechanisms, rather than just sitting back and watching a performance unfold. It’s not a particularly difficult room by design; puzzles have been made more playful and accessible on purpose, without losing that sense of actively pushing the story along yourself. It shows in the build quality, too: creator Kuan spent nine years as a structural engineer before this, and the dragon set piece in particular is built with safety and long-term durability clearly in mind, not just looks.

The finale is where all of this comes together. It’s genuinely something special, action-packed and funny in equal measure, with every player fully pulled into the fight as you stand with the princess for her final, decisive battle. We walked out grinning, and honestly, that alone should tell you everything you need to know: if you’re ever in Beijing or Shanghai, make room for AURORA on your playlist.