The Office of Student Life (OSL) and Bakersfield College Student Government Association (BCSGA) hosted the first online virtual escape room on April 13. 

BCSGA and OSL worked closely together to create multiple diverse virtual activities. 

The virtual escape room tested the participants’ knowledge about the campus with puzzles and riddles throughout their quest, leading them to their next clue and granting their passage as they move from one level to the next. 

There were a couple of ways to play the game as if participating in real life. Participants could have decided to play in teams, with one person in charge of reading, two searching the web for answers and the another member going back and forth from the group to the computer and inputting the correct answer to receive the next clue or participants could have decided to play individually. 

The virtual escape room was open all day online, giving participants plenty of time to get to know the Bakersfield College campus on a different level through research and shared common knowledge. 

With the medieval period language used, it mentally allowed the participants to escape with the virtual Renegade knight at your side. 

“The focus is to relieve students from the stress and anxieties of the pandemic along with the duration of the quarantine” which has been “creating some friction at home with family,” said Perla DelMar, creator of the escape room. 

“Benjamin (Benny) Balderama has been an amazing Program Manager for OSL and BCSGA…and was the one that worked on the Discord, having chats set up to mimic the physical office along with programming and finding bots that make communication to multiple people easier” DelMar said. 

“If other students express interest in another virtual escape room, it is something that the Department of Student Activities would be glad to take on,” DelMar said.

Bakersfield College students, professors, and nonstudents have evolved right along with these unusual times and have created online student engagement opportunities that are allowing students to still come together while still keeping the need for social distancing in effect. 

“Being able to still provide students with activities that fills them with pride for being a Renegade is something I strive for when creating such events,” DelMar said.