Author: David Spira

Co-founder of RoomEscapeArtist.com. Creative technologist, guitarist, puzzle junkie, and turner of phrases. I fight for the user.

TERPECA Nominations Are Open

by David Spira, posted in News

The Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Award – TERPECA – nomination process has begun. This a community-driven endeavor to help surface the finest games that our industry has produced.

Key Details for This Year

This year comes with a few twists… because everything is weird in 2020. The two things that everyone should know are:

  • Even if you haven’t played many real-life escape games this year… if you are eligible to nominate or vote, you still should.
  • Online escape rooms have their own category for nominating and voting.

Background

I’m not going to rehash the background on TERPECA; we’ve done that before. I will remind you that Lisa and I share a vote on the TERPECA board. It is not our project, but we do our best to help guide it along with a few other well-intentioned folks.

Anyway, our nominations are in.

We’ll remind you when voting opens up in a few weeks.

Top Escape Rooms Project: Enthusiast Choice Award 2018 logo. A gold ribbon made of keys.

official statement from TERPECA about 2020 Nominations:

The 2020 nomination window is now open! Nominations for this year’s awards are due October 31, 2020 at midnight Pacific time.

If you’re already approved as a nominator, visit https://voters.terpeca.com/ to get started. We hope that everyone that’s eligible to contribute will do so this year, to help make sure we can properly honor the great work of those that have had a difficult year. If you nominated rooms last year, the process should be much faster this year.

If you’re not an approved nominator, but you’ve played 200+ rooms and would like to join the project this year (or upgrade from voter status from last year), visit https://voters.terpeca.com/. You will be required to provide references and evidence of your room count, but we will do our best to process applications quickly.

Finally, please spread the word to anyone else you know that’s played at least 200 rooms to apply for nominator status as well. We are always trying to grow our pool of contributors to improve our coverage and quality of results.

We will announce the results of the nomination phase and launch the voting phase in early November. For questions, visit https://voters.terpeca.com/faq.

Crack a Nut Mysteries – S.O.U.P. [Review]

by David Spira, posted in Products, Reviews, Tabletop Escape Game

S.O.U.P. is on

Location:  at home

Date Played: September 20, 2020

Team size: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯; we recommend 2

Duration: about 90 minutes

Price: about $77

REA Reaction

S.O.U.P. was a light-hearted and approachable puzzle game with a fantastic sense of humor.

While largely paper-based, this game was deeply personalized and made with an abundance of care.

A field notes notebook branded SOUP, a SOUP enamil pin, an airline ticket with Lisa's name on it, and a world map with places of interest flagged.

The writing in S.O.U.P. was superb, and drastically different in tone and style than that of Root of All Evil. It’s impressive to see creators shift tone and approach so elegantly.

S.O.U.P. is an easy game to recommend. Because of the level of personalization, I suspect that it would make a great surprise gift.

Who is this for?

  • Story seekers
  • Puzzle lovers
  • Prop collectors
  • Any experience level

Why play?

  • Impressive personalization
  • Amusing and succinct storytelling
  • Strong, well presented puzzles

Story

In S.O.U.P. we had recently been recruited into the Society for the Observation of Unknown Phenomena. As junior investigators we were told to expect packages to examine strange happenings around the globe.

3 different mailed letters from SOUP.
Continue reading “Crack a Nut Mysteries – S.O.U.P. [Review]” →

You’re Invited to our IndieCade Panel!

by David Spira, posted in Uncategorized

The 2020 IndieCade Festival is happening on the Internet… because that’s where everything is happening this year.

IndieCade Anywhere & Everywhere palm tree banner.

We’ve been talking to the folks from IndieCade for years about doing a session with them, and this was the first time that the stars aligned… so here are the details (and a few other sessions that we think you’ll want to watch):

The Evolving Business of Escape Rooms

When: Thursday, October 22 from 9:00 – 9:45AM Pacific / 12:00 – 12:45PM Eastern

Who: We’ll be joining Juliana & Ariel from The Wild Optimists, and Elan Lee from Exploding Kittens (yes, the Exploding Kittens)

What: Escape Rooms, one of the fastest-growing sectors in games, has always been the site of bold innovation. The pandemic created upheaval. This was inevitable for a medium formed around the idea of physical, group interactivity. While early adaptation allowed escape room businesses to survive, creators continued to evolve the online medium to explore new areas: creating new styles of interaction and broadening accessibility. This panel of accomplished escape room designers, players, and researchers will discuss what has been lost, but also how these creators are pushing their industry to thrive in a future that is both online and in real life.

Tickets

While much of IndieCade is free, our session is only available to folks with a Plus ($45) or Premium ($155) pass. So grab your tickets before we’re on stage.

IndieCade is 10 days long and packed with games to play, people to meet, and things to learn. We’re excited to be a part of it.

IndieCade Tickets

Other Must-See Sessions

  • Expert Roundtable: Influence of Escape Rooms on Video Games (Premium/Plus)
    • This session has passed, but reruns are available on IndieCade’s Twitch channel
    • Speakers: Henry Smith, Laura E. Hall, Mink Ette, William Stacey, and Kim Belair (who spoke at RECON 2020)
  • Finalist Session: Mixing Realities (Premium/Plus)
    • Friday, October 23, 7:00-7:45AM Pacific / 10:00-10:45AM Eastern
    • Eva Anderson, Mark Backler, Mattieu Begin, Patrick Jagoda, Ricky Helgesson, and Tommy Honton

This is just a small selection of the many great sessions that IndieCade has to offer. We hope that you learn lots and play more.

Puzzley Prime Day Deals (10-13-2020)

by David Spira, posted in News

Greetings puzzlers.

Amazon Logo

Here are a few escape room-related items that are on sale today. Enjoy.

And while it isn’t an escape room… we are huge fans of the table top game Pandemic. It’s collaborative gameplay lends itself to the kind of cooperation that makes for strong escape room teams.

Finally, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild… it’s just great. If you haven’t played it, this is a good deal.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon 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.