Running out of air is a tricky bit to simulate. It doesn’t happen suddenly; it manifests as a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere, resulting in headaches and gradual degradation of cognitive skills. Many a submarine crew succumbed to this effect when at the later stages they were unable to perform the tasks needed to survive.
Well, since you don’t want to actually kill your players - that’s really bad for business, you understand - the running out of air could just be considered as the point at which you start into such a decline that you won’t make it out alive. Basically beyond this arbitrary point(*) you’ll be like those submarine crews and rapidly losing brain cells.
(* - This is also a good way to force a time limit on the game. It’s nice to incorporate it into the story line instead of reaching an hour and announcing “OK, puzzle solved or not, you’re done, get out.”)
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You just need a hypobaric chamber - simple!
There’s one at Oklahoma State.
I imagine it’s quite expensive to use, mind.
There’s a few amusing hypoxia videos on YouTube.
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I thought about, for pilot training or getting familiar with hypoxia symptoms (and insidiousness!) to get workers more respectful towards inert gases, not bothering with ambient pressure but go for partial pressure of oxygen while maintaining ambient. Diluting air with e.g. nitrogen. Watching the subject’s blood saturation with an oximeter, and other instrumentation to keep things from going bad.
Wouldn’t simulate the CO2 increase in enclosed spaces, but that could be also done by adding CO2 to the gas mix.
Possibly overkill for a just-some-fun event that’s not research or military/industry/aerospace training.
Did they loop the MacGyver Theme Song as you tried to escape?
Hearing that 50 times would of reduced me to a sobbing blob.
Can you kill the other seven people and save all the air for yourself ? I am figuring that you could play for a full 8 hours that way. Hey,8 hours for 30 bucks is a good deal. Everyone knows I am kidding right? Kidding, yeah that’s the ticket.
The best moments of LARPing are like this all weekend long.
Chris Addison
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What about simply requiring participants to down a shot every five minutes or so?
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That’s… not a bad idea! 
I’ve done about a dozen of these escape rooms in Los Angeles over the last several months with a group of friends, including “The Cavern”, which was definitely a good one (and, we made it out!). RoomEscapeLA was another favorite, especially the Cold War Bunker, where you employ some fun electronic gadgetry to stop a nuclear plot. Here are two LAist articles covering many of the games in the area, but it seems like new ones are popping up every week:
This is definitely a new hot trend this year in the U.S., and if there isn’t a room in your town yet, I bet there will be soon.
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