This post was updated Jan 28 at 8:35 p.m.

Within the walls of Courtside, students tried to escape something out of this world.

In Code Green, quartets of students navigated an immersive alien research laboratory, solving puzzles to uncover the truth behind Dr. Ally Ean’s disappearance – all inside a transformed UCLA dorm. The free escape room was a passion project by fourth-year theater student Tyler Neufeld, who handcrafted and designed the room as a passion project. After dozens of successful sessions and a burst of media and awards attention, the room’s creator is developing future projects following the closure of Code Green – including a potential career in the industry.

“I’ve always found escape rooms interesting, but it didn’t really become a passion until I started building one for myself,” he said. “Escape rooms are a really valid medium for both artistic expression and an actual career that I can go into.”

Neufeld said he has always exercised an interest in immersive design – as a child, he would craft easter egg hunts at Christmas time for his siblings and build Halloween mazes in his front yard. During the winter quarter of his junior year, he took a class on immersive design, which he said piqued his interest in creating his own space on campus. He said he began mapping out how his resident assistant dorm room could be transformed at the start of the next quarter.

“The design came first and foremost, because I knew I did not have very much money to spend on the project,” Neufeld said. “I was definitely thinking about what kind of atmosphere I could accurately create, and then what kind of story could go with it, and then what kind of puzzles.”

A few weeks later, he had covered his room from ceiling to floor in fake walls, immersive props and story-rich theming. Neufeld estimated he spent $300 on the project, cutting costs by crafting walls out of cardboard or blankets and using as many salvaged goods as possible. After prototyping the room in spring 2024, he moved the project from Centennial Hall to Courtside, also creating the Dorm Scapes organization and bringing on additional team members.

Third-year theater student and fellow RA Lia Gonzalez helped Neufeld construct the Courtside version of the room. She estimated that 80% of the room was made from found or recycled materials. They used goods found around the hill to transform Neufeld’s dormitory furniture, she said, such as by attaching painted styrofoam blocks to his fridge for an industrial look or dismantling an abandoned TV for parts as they prototyped an alien jail.

From this closet-turned-prison, a game master handles the room’s behind-the-scenes operations, offers hints to players and puppeteers a small alien named Groz. Third-year education and social transformation student and game master L Siswanto joined Dorm Scapes this fall when they saw the organization’s table at the Enormous Activities Fair. It said the game master role is a combination of acting – including an introductory monologue as Dr. Otto Space – and on-the-fly logistical and support challenges.

“I’m scrolling through my phone and then stuffing my hand back into the puppet and having to puppeteer it while trying to fiddle with different clues inside the alien jail and trying not to drop everything,” Siswanto said. “It is a bit of a learning curve.”

Second-year theater student Jin Schwabe, who is part of Dorm Scapes’ social media team, said the player reviews for the room were positive. They said the unique concept of a dorm room escape room sells itself in some ways, with the social media presence focused on showcasing the creative process behind the room and how to book a time. The main challenge, he added, was showing off the room without spoiling any plot points or surprises for first-time visitors.

Besides advertising the room itself, Schwabe said the Dorm Scapes social media presence also advertises Neufeld as an escape room designer. They added that Neufeld’s escape room generated a lot of interest from the professional escape room community, and they have enjoyed the opportunity to peer into the industry alongside him.

“All of this stuff is really opening a lot of doors for him, which I’m really excited about, because he’s really passionate about this,” Schwabe said. “This is his project, and he really deserves all the recognition and all the interest in it.”

That interest soon manifested itself as a Los Angeles Times article highlighting Code Green, which Neufeld said he has a complicated relationship with. On one hand, he said it was gratifying to see his hard work featured in a newspaper, and the increased visibility led to him developing further connections within the escape room industry. However, he was sometimes hesitant to send the article to friends because of its headline, which he said made it incorrectly seem as though loneliness drove the project, rather than passion or creativity.

Neufeld was also concerned the increased exposure of the room may lead to its closure by UCLA. He was proven correct when UCLA reached out to him just before finals week through his resident director, asking for the room’s immediate closure. Neufeld said they were concerned the faux-ceiling he had created blocked the room’s sprinklers, violating housing codes by creating a fire hazard. He had already planned to take the room down during winter break, so after hosting a few final sessions – including one with an industry expert who had completed nearly 600 rooms – Neufeld deconstructed the room, glad the matter was resolved politely and simply.

“It’s weird to live in my room now with no escape room,” Neufeld said. “I have enough of the prop materials and character cards and stuff to where I could set this up again if I wanted to – and hopefully build better walls. But for now, I’m good with leaving the physical Code Green room in the past.”

Despite the closure, however, Neufeld said he was offered an opportunity to develop an official escape room as a pop-up experience collaborating with UCLA Housing Program Events Management. The new room, planned to open in the spring, is billed as a squirrel-themed heist – something a little more UCLA themed, he added. The project, which he said was originally planned as his next dorm-room experiment, is still in the early planning stages and without a concrete timeline. However, Dorm Scapes team members are already planning the room and its puzzles, and are actively looking for team members to make it a reality.

Following the room’s closure, Neufeld has only become more embedded in the escape room industry, winning a 2025 REAction award from escape room publication “Room Escape Artist,” attending an escape room conference and connecting with industry professionals. He said everyone he has met in the small industry has been friendly and down-to-earth, and that a career in it would be a good opportunity to explore his passion for immersive design – something he has nurtured since childhood.

“If I could be a designer for an escape room chain that already exists, that would be awesome,” Neufeld said. “If not escape room game design, hopefully amusement park or theme park design of some sort.”

For now, Dorm Scapes still offers Code Green as a Zoom escape experience, though now with a $20 price tag per person – or only $5, with a full group of UCLA students. Neufeld added that he plans to retire Dorm Scapes following graduation, with the possible exception of building more puzzle murals similar to “Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work,” which he installed in the UCLA Cooperative Housing Association this past summer.

For Neufeld, Dorm Scapes’ projects represent a blend of his passions and a culmination of his experiences in set design, theater, scenic painting and more throughout his time at UCLA.

“Pretty much all the random stuff I’ve done for four years has lended itself to me being able to actually pull off this project,” Neufeld said. “If I tried to do this freshman year, I definitely don’t think that I could have.”