Most of the time, you're trying to solve different types of locks: key locks, 3 and 4 digit combination locks, combination locks with letters, directional locks (not going to say always try the Konami code, but there's a good chance that's going to be the answer), stuff like that. You may have to solve riddles to figure out where the keys and combinations are.

Some puzzles are purely observation. The Jurassic Park "hide stuff in the bottom of a Barbasol can" trick is pretty popular, there are safes where they tell you the code is the "boss's wife's birthday", so you have to find the calendar or rolodex or dated happy birthday note in the room.

There was one room I did that swapped the keycaps on a typewriter to make a substitution cipher- type the coded message into the typewriter and the decoded message would come out.

The rooms with higher production quality tend to incorporate more technology into the puzzles. One room I did gave you instructions on a radio (which you got from a previous locked box), if you were tuned to the right station- hinted at from a different clue, with the radio instructions changing as you finished each step. Another room had rigged together a large box with a Kinect or Leap Motion or something similar setup where you had to stick your hand into the box and move it around in the right place to open a magnetic lock, but the screen showing you the correct sequence was in another room that you couldn't see so your teammates had to be in the other room shouting directions at you.

There are lots of different things.

I've done some where you have to physically search for hidden objects in the room, some where you sit down and do puzzles on paper, some where you have to recognize clues that refer to other things in the room, some where you have to figure out specific unexpected actions to take in a particular room or physical situation, and some where there were physical puzzle artifacts scattered around the room and it was quite recognizable what the puzzles were, but not necessarily obvious what to do with them.

So there really isn't just one style. (Also, some rooms give hints proactively, some give hints on request, while others are quite happy for you to lose if the hour runs out and you haven't figured it out yet.)

They can be a lot of fun, but quality varies a lot between rooms. Each place usually has one or two fixed room designs that rarely or never change, so each one is a one-time experience. You can't really replay them since you will know all the answers.

If you have ever played the Professor Layton video game series, the puzzles often remind me of that - a mix of lateral thinking, observation, basic codes and patterns and careful observation. The whole experience is very much like a real life puzzle video game.

I've done several of these and highly recommend it. Part of the puzzle is that you don't always know what the objective is; you explore a themed room turning knobs, pushing things and looking for anything out of the ordinary that might resemble a clue. It could be that you knock on a painting hanging on the wall and a hidden door opens, revealing a key. You remember that you tried to open a chest earlier but it was locked. So you try the key and the chest opens, revealing another clue.