Game-based learning and educational escape rooms are increasingly used in teaching and learning since they improve student motivation, engagement and learning. However, prior literature has not studied team collaboration in gamified contexts sufficiently according to recent literature reviews. This study focuses on collaboration among team members in educational escape rooms in higher education. The objective of this study was to understand how collective mindfulness and mindlessness occur in physical and digital game-based learning. The video data was collected from three different courses, with 25 student teams, 96 participants and contains more than 15 hours of material. The analysis revealed both mindful and mindless behaviors in team interaction. Paper contributes to gamification literature by presenting the first study using collective mindfulness and mindlessness theory in understanding team collaboration noticing factors affecting member equality in both digital and physical escape rooms. It was also noticed that mindfulness may be relative depending on the observation perspective.