The red clock on the wall keeps ticking down, down, down.

Half a dozen padlocks are dotted around the room, cryptic clues are hanging on the walls, and we are stuck.

We've been locked in a room, five of us, and we have one hour to escape.

No, we haven't been kidnapped, we're not being held hostage, and we're not in danger. In fact, we locked ourselves in this room of our own free will; we want to be here.

And we even paid for the pleasure.

This is all the doing of the team at Escape Masters Tauranga.

It works like this: you gather between two and six willing participants, head to Escape Masters in Red Square, and get yourself locked in a room with one way in and another way out.

And you have one hour.

The rooms are filled with puzzles and cryptic clues on how to escape – hatches, combination locks, and cryptic messages left behind for you to figure out.

Escape Masters Tauranga currently have three rooms to choose from – the circus room, the prison escape, or the Eyres Family General Store

Our teams tried the prison room and the circus room – the prisoners escaped within their hour, but the circus-goers didn't quite manage it, wrenching the door open 15 seconds after the timer had expired.

Not everything is a clue, but every little thing feels like a clue. It seems as though every item, every scratch and marking, is there on purpose. Some are, others are red herrings, designed to throw escapees off.

As soon as we were finished, we all wanted to go again. It's almost addictive, the rush of figuring out a clue and finding a way out – especially if you find a clue before everyone else in your team.

Escape Masters Tauranga recently opened its doors to the public, after running a weekend of free trials to iron out any kinks in the rooms. From these trials – where they asked for a donation per room – they were able to raise $426 for the Under The Stars charity.

So the question now is – can you escape the room?