The room usually consists of a locked door, objects to manipulate, and hidden clues or secret compartments.
[10] However, the growth of escape the room games is believed to be tied to the popularity of the Myst series, first released in 1993 by Cyan Worlds, which created puzzles across pre-rendered computer-generated environments, requiring players to look for clues across the landscape.
[1][2][6] Room escapes usually have a minimalistic interface, ambient soundtrack, and no non-player characters; these elements can enhance the gamer's sense of isolation.
As the player passes the mouse over the game screen, usually the mouse cursor will change shape (e.g. to a hand or different kind of arrow) if the item under the cursor can be used, opened, manipulated, collected, searched or (if an exit) followed, but some games do not provide such hints to the player.
Some require significant amounts of pixel hunting (tedious searching for a small clickable area), which can frustrate players.