Room Escape Artist

Come with me, and you’ll see, how to avoid attending a disaster.

Over the last few days, the internet has been abuzz about a new immersive experience which opened in Glasgow last weekend, Willy’s Chocolate Experience.

Its webpage looked like this:

The event looked like this:

(Images via Reddit – Rainbow & Bridge)

Yikes.

It closed last weekend too. After the police were called to ensure no one got hurt by families angrily demanding refunds, which they have reportedly been promised.

Failure is an Opportunity to Learn

There will always be people willing to offer a vastly substandard experience to turn a quick profit and run, as well as good-intentioned new creators who end up way over their head and can’t deliver in the end; this is a sad reality.

In the wake of all this attention, people will undoubtedly be more anxious about taking the plunge on an immersive experience. At Room Escape Artist, we spend a lot of time finding immersive games to share with you. Here are our tips on how to vet an experience before you buy tickets. We’re here to prevent you from “enjoying” a Willy’s Chocolate Experience-caliber event.

A World of Imagination, but not PURE Imagination

Willy’s Chocolate Experience had no photographic representation of the event at all. The different areas were instead represented by some colorful AI-generated artwork, complete with gibberish text. Please take a moment and be catgacated by the ungirevel of it all.

Experiences ideally should have some photographic representation of their space and sets. Carefully selected to avoid spoilers, of course, images should show the overall production quality of any experience you’re interested in. These need to be more than marketing and concept art.

Great examples in different styles can be found in these 2023 Golden Lock Award-winning experiences: The Extraction, Madness: 1917, The Last Defender, and The Body Shop.

I Want Their Names

We here at Room Escape Artist are big fans of credits for the creators behind the experiences we love. When trying to evaluate an experience, look for a page listing the creative team or cast.

This is not just so that you can appreciate the range of effort it takes to immerse you in another world, but also because when people’s names are there, those people are willing to tell the world that they’re associated with the experience.

The organizers behind Willy’s Chocolate Experience are not found on its webpage beyond a company link (to another AI-generated website).

Are You Seeing What I’m Seeing?

It’s always great when you can go and experience something completely unspoiled on the recommendation of someone you trust, but sometimes you get to be the first person you know to take in an experience. But probably not the first person, period, so look for reviews! Good experiences will often highlight reviews right on their website.

But what if the experience is brand new? Some events will do previews and/ or stock early performances with local press and influencers, whose feedback is just a quick search away. Previews can be taken with a grain of salt. Experiences run by caring, observant, invested creators will make improvements over their run, and sometimes an experience doesn’t match well with a given influencer. But the fact that previews happened shows that the production company is making an effort and the experience isn’t just smoke and mirrors.

No reviews or press coverage are found on Willy’s Chocolate Experience’s webpage.

Rise of the Machines

Writing, art, and graphic design are all core competencies for creating good immersive entertainment. Accordingly, you should be deeply suspicious of any experience which needs to offload website writing or art to AI, and even more so if the content is left in a state where it is obviously AI-generated.

Shining in a Weary World

Buying a ticket to any immersive experience is a leap of faith that your chosen company will whisk you away to a place that’s fun or interesting. But with a little thought and searching it doesn’t have to be a blind leap. A little vigilance can keep you from encountering The Unknown.

No, seriously, the AI-written script added an ultra-generic masked villain named “The Unknown” to the Willy Wonka McDuff Chocolate Experience. Follow these tips and don’t let it be your paying, attending face someone has to blur out of a photograph of the next disaster.