Following “The State of US,” Prudential’s authentic docuseries that uncovered the financial struggles of real Americans on their path to financial wellness, we needed a way to engage a younger audience that wasn’t quite ready to engage in the conversation. For younger consumers, financial goals can feel too lofty and abstract. In order to make financial wellness a real and immediate concern for millennials, we tapped into the cultural phenomenon of escape rooms.

From dungeons to prison cells and haunted hotels, the escape room phenomenon has reached a fever pitch among millennials. So we decided to create an experience that began in a situation millennials can’t seem to escape: living with their parents.

The Prudential Escape Room was an experience that let people live out 30 years of financial challenges in 30 minutes—starting off trapped in their parents basement.

Through various challenges, the millennial-focused experience immersed players in a series of life stages and financial situations. All the while, a clock was counting up in years—and the quicker they escaped, the younger they retired.

Launching at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, this experience reimagined the escape room phenomenon, turning a cultural trend into a learning tool for a new generation.

Nearly 9 in 10 millennials believe they will need to work much longer than previous generations in order to retire with the same level of financial security (80 Year Old Millennial Study). We knew that this perception was misaligned with reality: that with the right tools and support from a partner like Prudential, this didn’t have to be the case.

But as a company they didn’t know much about, in a category they tended to ignore, we couldn’t just “tell them”—it would fall on deaf ears. To help this audience feel that tackling their challenges was feasible, we’d have to make these challenges feel tangible. We’d have to give them a way to experience them firsthand, in a way they couldn’t ignore. In doing so, we could lift the veil to show that financial wellness is more within reach than they might have thought.

The Prudential Escape Room allowed players to live out 30 years of their life in 30 minutes. Starting off trapped in their parents basement, players progressed to an office job and eventually to a living room where they were forced to live with aging parents and angsty teenagers all under one roof. Only by decrypting, whack-a-moling, and dancing their way through financial lessons were they able to escape each room before finally breaking free to retirement.

The Prudential Escape Room was released on October 29 at the three-day Fast Company Innovation Festival at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The 1,056ft2 experience required 21 carpenters to install in under 21 hours. Following the festival, in an effort to bring the experience to as many as possible, it was adapted to a mobile experience—challenges and puzzles were loaded onto a 28’x8’ ft trailer, which is traveling across the country now.

The Prudential Escape Room pushed younger audiences to better understand their financial wellness. After taking part in the activation, 90% of attendees claimed they were more likely to budget, and 88% said they were more likely to consider their financial future moving forward. 86% even committed to starting an emergency fund.