Escape Room News: December 2018

The monthly escape room newsletter is a new feature on Room Escape Artist. Please share your news with us.

Anaheim, CA

• Cross Roads Escape Games, creator of the 2016 Golden Lock-In Award-winning Hex Room, has opened a new game: The Psych Ward is not your average escape room. It is an interactive game of deduction, trust, and betrayal, with escape room, board game, and immersive theatre elements. We’re intrigued.

Washington, CT

• There is a new escape room at The Institute for American Indian Studies: can you thrive for a day in 1518? In an immersive forest setting with no locks, keys or clocks, Wigwam Escape‘s thematic puzzles challenge game players to hunt, find water and prepare food similar to how Native people did for thousands of years prior to European contact.

Washington, DC

• Escape Room Live has left their original small basement digs at 2300 Wisconsin Ave. in DC’s Glover Park. Their upstairs neighbor, Insomnia Escape, has taken over the space with a new game, The Patient. Insomnia plans to bring another game to that space in the near future. Escape Room Live still has two much larger facilities in Georgetown, DC and Alexandria, VA.

Tickfaw, LA

• Rise Escape Rooms will be closing their escape room business on February 1, 2019. They will be focusing on their seasonal haunted house business instead. We’re incredibly sad to see them close their doors. Spellbound, Hijacked, and The Bookie were wonderful escape rooms. We’re glad to hear that they sold the games to good homes.

Frederick, MD

• Clue IQ opened a Christmas-themed escape room called Holiday Hijinks for families to spend some puzzling time together to get in the holiday spirit!

New York, NY

• Mission Escape Games has two new games coming soon to their Flushing, NY location: The Secret of the Alchemist and The Enigma Mission. Stay tuned for booking details soon.
• Myss Tic is about a week away from the end of their Kickstarter campaign to launch in Brooklyn, NY. Their Montauk Project is almost ready to open.

Troy, NY

• Enigmatic Escapes’ new room Defeat the Biz is now open. In this retro return to the year 1990, you are employees in the hottest consumer electronics store around and you have an hour to open or lose your jobs!

Portland, OR

• Hour to Midnight has opened a new game called House of Darkness. It is part escape room and part haunted house; only the brave should tackle this one! Having played The Secrets of Nibiru last year, we’re looking forward to getting back out to Portland to play.

Houston, TX

• Strange Bird Immersive, creators of the 2017 Golden Lock-In Award-winning The Man from Beyond, is moving… and there’s a puzzle game involved: in the free online game “Where’s Walter,” follow Madame Daphne’s bird Walter across the map of Houston to learn where Strange Bird is moving… and maybe get a hint of what else that new location will hold.

International

• The members of the band First Aid Kit brought their friends The Staves to play Cursed Carnival at Breakout Liverpool in the UK.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU_6HECj6KQ&feature=youtu.be

Online

• Darren Miller has two new online puzzles for the holidays: Holiday Gift Guide and The Tree

Announcements

• We will announce the 2018 Golden Lock-In Award winners on January 2 at 8:30pm Eastern. We will livestream the announcement and then publish the blog post.
• This month we launched a Patreon to continue to grow this website more sustainably. Thank you to the 50+ readers who have already supported us! If you find our content valuable, we encourage you to support Room Escape Artist on Patreon.

Press

• Great Escapes in The Weekly Standard on December 14, 2018
• Escape Wizards: Harry Potter-Themed Escape Rooms in the School Library Journal on November 07, 2018

How To Submit News

Share your own news here!

We haven’t visited all of the companies featured in this news bulletin, but they (and their fans!) shared their news with us and we’re excited to share it with you. Follow their lead and submit your news!

News items include:

• Facility openings & closings
• Game openings & closings
• Special events
• Escape room-related products
• Escape room-related intrigue of all sorts
• Celebrity visits (if you have a post-game photo that we can publish)
• Escape room pieces in the general press

Send us your newsworthy information via our news submission form: