Room Escape Artist

Sold out escape room venues often consider “pipelining” as a way to increase customer throughput. That is, designing a game space that allows a new team to enter as soon as the previous team has moved far enough ahead. “Open world” is another design technique to consider for accommodating multiple teams in an experience at the same time.

Public And Private

Taking inspiration from challenge arcades such as Level99 and Boda Borg, an open world escape room design can include both public and private spaces. A number of private – possibly self-resetting – puzzle rooms can reside inside a larger public area. 

These private spaces allow only one team at a time, with lighted signs outside each door indicating if a room is currently occupied. But unlike those bigger facilities, a unified narrative can make each room part of the same storyline and fictional universe. 

The rooms can be visited in any order, each providing an item or information required to complete the ultimate goal. In the public spaces between, teams can cross paths with each other. The setting and story should provide a valid reason for seeing strangers in your game. For example, the setting could be public town square surrounded by individual buildings or a school hallway lined with individual classrooms.

It is not difficult to imagine players from different teams interacting – perhaps collaborating – in the public spaces, yet the private gaming rooms eliminate the problem of a queue of people watching an interaction over and over while they wait for their turn to do the exact same thing.

Case Study: Kandy Corp

I recently played an example of an open world escape room at City 13 in Milwaukee, WI. City 13 describes Kandy Corp as a “uniquely social escape room experience.” Players may encounter other teams moving through the hallways of the factory. Kandy Corp employees also inhabit the facility and are a great resource of information should new recruits need a hint from time to time. The different department rooms, however, are private 15-minute escape rooms occupied by one group at a time.

The entire experience takes about 90 minutes to complete, but the open world throughput design allows City 13 to start a new team into the game every 20-30 minutes. So, in effect, it is possible for them to sell 3 or 4 bookings for the same physical game space at the same time. I played as part of a team that entered 20 minutes after the previous group and we never saw those other players again until we were all back out in the lobby after completing the game.

The Downside

I will admit that a bunch of self-resetting, button-pushing games might not be my favorite type of escape room experience. With Kandy Corp, City 13 was able to overcome that problem with a mixture of tasks and puzzle types that didn’t feel too repetitive. I trust other creators will be able to do the same. 

A series of shorter, smaller escape rooms might not be able to deliver the level of depth or surprise that customers have come to expect from full size escape rooms. It is important that they each feel like one part of a larger, more impressive whole.

Trying to maintain a maximum “up” time for each room means that long physical resets or maintenance between groups will be challenging. 

The Upside

A more profitable escape room model that actually works is something special. Also special is the potential that is released when open world principles are combined with traditional escape rooms. Game worlds feel bigger, more real, and more alive when other people and other characters are moving through them.

Multiple bookings per hour benefit customers planning their itineraries. It creates more opportunities for people to play during those popular time periods, improving the player experience. 

There is a real possibility for these types of games to work if designers can overcome the common open world problems of queuing around interactions, disconnected narrative, and a head-down, app-focused play style. This solution can also avoid some of the frustrating rushing and/ or waiting that can happen during some pipelined games.

Open world games that can scale up to accept multiple groups is just one of the new horizons being explored in the escape room world. 

Do you know of an interesting or unique escape room design that deserves to be highlighted by Room Escape Artist? Contact us and we will do our best to keep our audience informed and up to date on the cutting edge of our favorite hobby.