Red Door Escape Room is bringing a live, TV-style game show experience to the same Southlake storefront where the whole company began more than a decade ago. Game Show Studio officially debuts Saturday at 280 Commerce St., Suite 285, giving guests a chance to compete in rapid-fire trivia, physical challenges, and studio-lit games rather than solve a locked room.
A Homecoming for Red Door's Original Location
Southlake holds a special place in Red Door's history: it's where founder Dan Huynh, his wife, and a business partner opened the company's very first escape room in July 2015, after Huynh built an earlier game called Confinement for college students at his church in late 2014, according to Red Door Escape Room. Red Door has since grown to more than 20 locations nationwide, and the company's own September announcement calls Southlake its flagship original site, framing the Game Show Studio integration there as a landmark moment for the venue, per a release carried by PR Newswire.
As CultureMap Fort Worth reports, the Southlake studio is the sixth Game Show Studio to open inside a Red Door venue and the second in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Nick Madden, CEO of Red Door Escape Room, said Game Show Studio complements the company's existing escape rooms rather than replacing them. Game Show Studio had already opened softly before Saturday's official debut, the outlet notes.
Plinko, Trivia and a 60-Minute Format
Inside, guests will find games including Name That Price, Push Your Luck, Matchup Madness and Wheel of Wonder, all part of a family-friendly, host-led format that runs 60 minutes and pairs lights and studio effects with trivia and physical challenges. Name That Price features a nine-foot Plinko board, per the same CultureMap account. Groups of eight to more than 20 people can book a session, choosing from more than 13 games total, and tickets run $37.95 with timed-entry booking.
The Southlake location is open 11 a.m. to 8:50 p.m. next Sunday through next Thursday and 9:45 a.m. to 10:35 p.m. next Friday and Saturday. Next Saturday's grand opening kicks off at 11 a.m. with venue tours, mini-games, and giveaways, and event bookings made during the celebration come with a discounted rate of $25 per ticket.
DFW's First Game Show Studio Launched in Fort Worth
The Dallas-Fort Worth market's first Game Show Studio opened inside Red Door's Montgomery Plaza location in Fort Worth in 2025, marked by an official ribbon-cutting, according to The Business Press. Game Show Studio co-founder Julian Wagner, a Fort Worth native, described the launch as a personal milestone. Wagner previously scaled the Pedal Pub business to roughly 60 national locations with partner Max Lauerman before teaming up with former Ernst & Young accountant Jack Slayton, who had come from private equity firm Proprietors Capital, to build Game Show Studio, per background reported by Meetings + Events.
Game Show Studio's very first storefront opened in October 2023 inside Rosedale Center in Roseville, Minnesota, taking over a second-floor space that had previously housed a Weight Watchers store, according to Bring Me The News. The concept expanded outside Texas for the first time in June 2025 at the Nimbus Winery Shopping Center in Rancho Cordova, California, where Red Door had already operated a location since 2018, per the Rancho Cordova Independent. By mid-2026, Game Show Studio had spread to more than a dozen cities across North America, including Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, Sacramento, San Diego, and Newark, Delaware, with venues built around private bookings for corporate team building and social gatherings.
North Texas Becomes a Testing Ground for TV-Style Attractions
Southlake's new studio lands in a North Texas market that has increasingly embraced television-inspired group entertainment. The Great Big Game Show opened inside Grandscape in The Colony in 2023, and Hulu's Only Murders in the Building escape room debuted in Grapevine in 2025, making the region a competitive hub for TV-themed attractions, as noted by CultureMap Fort Worth's earlier coverage of the trend. Hoodline previously touched on the region's game-show craze in its coverage of Mocha Point's opening at City Foundry.
The growth locally mirrors a much larger shift underway across the entertainment industry. Global location-based entertainment revenue was estimated at $7.04 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $31.71 billion by 2034, growing at a compound annual rate of 19.9%, according to market research from Fortune Business Insights. Analysts attribute much of that growth to demand for interactive group play among younger adults. Accounting firm EY reported in a December 2025 analysis that experiential entertainment has shifted from a secondary side business to a primary strategic priority for companies chasing consumers who want real-world social experiences over digital consumption.
For Red Door, the Southlake integration ties that national momentum back to where the company's story started. Game Show Studio's targets for the space include birthday parties, bachelor and bachelorette parties, corporate events, and other group outings, giving the original Red Door storefront a new second act more than a decade after it first opened its doors.
