Room Escape Artist

One of the longest-standing and most viable escape room tropes is the split team start.* It’s a good hook and a smart way to build team-based challenges into a game.

That said, there are some serious pitfalls that designers face when building split team beginnings. A few years ago we explored the Regrouping Problem, and suggested quite a few ways to mitigate these issues – so we aren’t going to cover any of that – other than to say, you should read that because it delves into other related concepts.

*Occasionally, escape rooms split players later in the experience, and this applies to those splits as well.

Today we’re looking specifically at the 4 common split team challenge structures:

• Symmetrical Perpendicular
• Asymmetrical Perpendicular
• Symmetrical Parallel
• Asymmetrical Parallel

Before we explore the value of each of these, we’re going to have to define the concepts.

Definitions

Perpendicular vs Parallel

When thinking about perpendicular and parallel split team challenges, we’re thinking specifically about if the teams are interacting with one another.

Parallel challenges are like parallel lines, running next to one another and never touching. The players are off in their own spaces solving puzzles that require zero interaction with the other team. They might as well be playing different games.

Perpendicular challenges, like perpendicular lines, cross paths. The split groups must exchange knowledge, insights, or objects in order to solve the puzzles.

Symmetrical vs Asymmetrical

When thinking about symmetrical and asymmetrical split challenges, we’re looking specifically at the volume of content available to each group of players.

In a symmetrically designed game, each group has the same volume of challenges to solve, if not the same challenges.

In an asymmetrically designed room, one group has more to do than the other. In extreme cases this can mean that one group has a lot to do while another group has nothing to accomplish other than wait.

Of note, solo moments are not the same as split-team game design, and these recommendations don’t apply. Those need to be handled differently.

The Right Way to Split a Team

I’m going to be very blunt – as a general rule – symmetrical perpendicular games are almost always the only worthy way to begin a split team game properly.

When the team is split, they should have to interact with one another and they should have roughly the same amount of game to play for as long as they are split (which could be for a couple of minutes or as long as the entire game).

Have there been great games that defy this convention? Absolutely… but they are rare and far more difficult to pull off.

Why Do The Other Structures Fail?

Parallel game design is a generally pointless concept. Two teams splitting up with no viable points of interaction is silly. Escape rooms are about collaboration. Going through the hassle of splitting a team up and not building mechanics around that split is a total waste.

Asymmetrical games are just kind of sad. Everyone paid the same price for a game experience, but only some people get content to explore? Why is that even a thing? It’s wretched to have nothing or next to nothing to do while waiting for someone else to finish having fun before you can even move. And this problem is usually made worse by the theming of your typical split-team game. Usually it’s some kind of prison with grey walls and not much to look at. If you’re lucky, maybe there’s a poster of Rita Hayworth to look at, but not much else.

Closing Thoughts

When designing a split team escape room experience, it’s important to remember that splitting the team creates a game mechanic that can either be used or ignored. If you ignore it, you shouldn’t have created it in the first place. No one made you split the team; it was a conscious decision on your part.

It is equally important to put yourself into your player’s shoes cell. At any given point in the game, what fun and value is being delivered to each player? If your escape game has dead or nearly dead time for some players while others have far more to do, then something is wrong. Fix it.

The magic of an escape game is in the design. It’s there because it was put there by someone who thought through every detail. Or the magic is absent because someone didn’t think and that void was filled with tedium, or worse, nothing.

Do the work. Make magic.

Thank you!

Thank you to our Patreon backers. We love talking to you about game design in our Patreon Discord channel. Here are some game design thoughts to chew on today.

Special shout out to the 11 NEW PATRONS who joined this month! Katrina Lat, Jessica Schoolman, Alisha Patterson, Nico Cesar, Mark H Willis, Brett Johnson, Dawnward, Steffanie, Karin, Nate Javier, and Adrian Belzebut.

To those of you reading who have the means, we hope you’ll consider joining this wonderful group of supporters.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon or Etsy after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.