Room Escape Artist

This month we announced multiple Golden Lock Award winners, including one experience that closes soon, multiple in-person escape rooms, and one tabletop game. Plus, scroll to the bottom for a collection of thought provoking articles about game design by Matthew Stein and Richard Burns.

RECON is Almost Here!

If you don’t have your RECON ticket yet, what are you waiting for?

RECON Remote is happening August 17-18th, 2025.

The complete schedule will be announced later this week!

Reviews

🔒 Golden Lock Winners

The Case of the Curiously Correct Blueprints: An Ells and Ernie Mystery, Bluefish Games (tabletop escape game) – This tabletop game offered witty humor, a detailed story, and a wide variety of puzzle types. (Review by Christina Rohlf)

Parlour Nouveau, Puzzalarium (San Diego, CA) – Parlour Nouveau is a true chimera – part escape-room puzzling, part tableau-building card game. Only running until August 3, 2025. (Review by Tammy McLeod)

Rise of the Icarus, CU Adventures in Time & Space (Urbana, IL) – Rise of the Icarus was by far CU Adventures’ most aesthetically beautiful creation, and the puzzles were collaborative and fun! (Review by Lisa Spira)

The Taxidermist, Deep Inside (Paris, France) – Deep Inside has created an incredible immersive escape room world with City of Martyrs, where The Taxidermist was set. (Review by Cindi S.)

Escape Rooms

Mad Scientist, PARADOXsquared (Woodstock, IL) – Mad Scientist had an abundance of heart, delivering the kind of game that we found undeniably entertaining. (Review by David Spira)

Play-At-Home

Emerald Echoes, PostCurious (tabletop escape game) – Emerald Echoes was a beautiful tabletop escape game experience from the acclaimed PostCurious. It plays fully offline. Back in on Kickstarter today! (Review by David Spira)

Podcast

We closed out REPOD season 9: REPOD S9E12: Lockhill – Designing for Chaos – Bill Dalitsikas, owner of Lockhill Escape Game in Athens, Greece, and creator of top-rated horror escape rooms, joined us on REPOD.

PG’s Playhouse E21: Uranium Glass (ft. Emily Jillette)… the history of Uranium Glass and a word puzzle where we add the letter U!

Recommendation Guides

• New: Paris, France

Commentary

Richard Burns’ published a 3-part series on players feeling seen:

• The Importance of Feeling Seen in Escape Rooms
• Escape Room Players Feel Seen at Hope End
• Making Escape Room Players Feel Seen: Being Dolores Wright

Plus, there’s more:

Make Failure Fun, But Don’t Hide Fun Behind Failure – Here’s how escape rooms can make failure fun, fair, and meaningful, and how forced failure can sometimes be a powerful game mechanic. (By Matthew Stein)

On Escape Rooms That End With Player Choice – It can be fun for an escape room to include a dramatic choice made by the players as they enter the finale. But here’s how it can go wrong. (By Richard Burns)

What We Can Begin To Learn From Strange Bird Immersive’s THE ENDings – THE ENDings closed this month, but here we look at it as an intriguing case study: innovative elements and approach to replayability (By Matthew Stein)

Why I Love Enamel Pins As Escape Room Swag – Pins are compact, affordable, and easy to display. They make excellent escape room merch. Here are our tips for pins. (By Matthew Stein)