Room Escape Artist

Earth. Fire. Air. Water. Each of these elements presents challenges so unique that under most conditions, most escape room creators should never use any of them at all.

Today we’re going to explore water and how people use it in escape rooms. More often than not, escape room creators regret the inclusion of water in their games and tend to avoid it in the future. We’ll look into why that is. We’re also going to dig into the very real health risks that water can present if it isn’t handled with the utmost respect.

How is water used in escape rooms?

We’re aware of water being used in every imaginable scale in an escape room context.

Large Scale Water

• Back in very early 2020, I played a now closed game in Athens, Greece called Survivor that featured an utterly massive lake with all sorts of gymnastics equipment that we had to traverse. The amount of water was astounding.
• In a Reality Escape Pod Bonus Show, we had Rich Bragg and Dan Egnor join us to tell the story of an escape room that they played in Beijing, China that featured a pair of pools that were connected by an underwater tube that players had to swim through.
• There have been SCUBA diving escape rooms where players are literally underwater for the entire game.

Medium Scale Water

While not as dramatic, water has been featured in significant ponds and waterfalls in a number of escape rooms over the years. Some of them have been quite prominent.

Small Scale Water

On the smaller, and more common scale, water tends to show up in small interactions:

• Fill a cylinder to float a key to the surface.
• Combine a few items to form a simple chemical reaction.
• Make a window look like it’s raining outside.
• Reach into the fountain/ fish tank/ clogged sink/ icky toilet to fish out an item.
• A device sprays or mists players.

There isn’t a shortage of ways to use water in an escape room. It’s understandable why game designers want to include water. It can do cool things. Plus it is a fundamental part of life on Earth. It often makes sense to include it.

Why do most companies regret including water in their escape games?

To quote my father, “water always wins.” Give it enough time and it will always find its way into places where you desperately do not want it.

My opinion of home maintenance is that 90% of the job is trying to make sure that water is exactly where it should be and never anywhere else. It’s exhausting.

So bringing water into your escape room feels a bit like inviting a vampire into your home. It’s going to bite you.

Either the players are going to pour that water into the wrong place, a leak will spring, or it’s going to get very moldy and gross.

Also… water is extremely heavy.

Tangent Time: The Weight of Water

“I want to play a game…”

Water at scale is so much heavier than most people realize.

If you are putting a substantial water feature into your building without getting a professional to do some math to ensure that the structure can handle it, you’re a very brave soul.

Back to my main point.

Why is water frequently an unsafe element in an escape room?

Of all of the things that can go wrong with water in an escape room, I have two primary concerns.

Drowning

I’m not going to spend much time on this, but if I don’t include it someone is going to hassle me about it.

Yeah… if you’re building a game that features players submerging themselves in water, drowning is a very real possibility. If you have enough water that this is possible, it is incumbent on you to have well-designed and fast-acting safety protocols in places to rescue your players.

That’s all that I’m going to say on this subject because there are so few escape rooms that use water on this scale… and most of the ones that I am aware of don’t exist anymore. It’s so extraordinarily rare that my guess is that most of the people who are reading this far down this article have just learned about most or all of them from this piece.

Mold & Microbes

As a player and advocate for escape rooms, my real concern with water is that it opens up these games to all sorts of opportunities for mold and microbial growth.

There are a lot of different microbes that can and will grow in untreated pools of water, but I am going to focus on the most famous one: Legionella bacteria also known as Legionnaire’s disease.

I’m going to quote John’s Hopkins on this because we’re wading into medicine (source):

• “Legionnaire’s disease does not spread from person to person. Instead, it is transmitted by inhaling tiny water droplets contaminated with Legionella.”
• “Potential sources of Legionella bacteria include hot tubs, fountains, shower heads, misting systems, swimming pools, large air-conditioning units (especially those with cooling towers), plumbing systems and certain soils.”
• “Older adults, smokers and those with weakened immune systems are more likely to develop Legionnaire’s disease.”

Put more simply, if you have a pool of untreated water, stuff will grow in it.

If you have humans reaching into that pool, then stuff will grow more readily because the microbes from their skin will make their way into the water.

Aside from this being generally gross, it really is dangerous.

Treat your water, or don’t use water

Using water in your escape rooms is a burden and a responsibility to both you and your players.

If you don’t treat your water feature like a pool – chlorinating and circulating it properly – then you are at risk of harming yourself, your staff, and your players.

I’ve talked about one specific bacteria that can create problems, but there are so many more.

I have said this before, and I’ll say it again: A fun interaction is not worth destroying someone’s life.

When it comes to untreated water, I think that most of the creators who use it don’t know the risks that they are assuming on-behalf of themselves or their players. I certainly didn’t know about this when I started playing escape rooms… and for many years into my career.

My hope is that more people learn, and make better decisions.

Editor’s Note: If you’re here at the end of this article, you are thinking deeply about this industry. You belong to our community. For more about topics such as this one, support us on Patreon and join our Patreon Discord conversation. And for those of you who are already supporters, thank you!