Author: Richard Burns

Something that struck me recently is how I have evolved as an escape room player and how that path, and where it took me, has been different than I would have expected.

My journey began like so many others. 

“We should try one of those escape rooms.”

 “What is an escape room?” 

Instant Enthusiast

I became an escape room enthusiast after playing my very first game several years ago. I was blown away by the idea. I was captivated by the challenge, the immersion, and the feeling of competing against the clock and winning. We booked another room for the next evening, after which I was even more convinced. I said to my wife, “There is something to this. This is a new medium, a new business model, a new industry.” All I wanted to do was play more games, play every game, introduce these games to my friends, and try to set new record times.

A More Discerning Palate

Something changed, however, as I played more and more escape games. I discovered the wide range in quality of the escape room universe. Some of these companies and the rooms they had created were really good! I started to care more about things like set design and construction, lighting and sound, characters and story, and puzzle design. I found that some companies were just better at their craft. 

I decided to shift my focus to finding more of these great rooms. I began online searching and reading escape room reviews, Facebook groups, and regional spreadsheets. I was taking it all in. 

One day I read a review of a new escape room that just opened in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, of all places. It was called Cutthroat Cavern at 13th Gate Escape. I was awestruck by the reviewer’s description of the scale. I couldn’t fathom sets like he’d described and the size and complexity of the space. This sounded like a fully constructed world… and the recipe for that true immersion I craved. 

A few months later, I was able to convince some friends to travel with me from Wisconsin to a city in the South that none of us had ever thought we would visit, just to play all the games at 13th Gate. 

Reflecting upon Cutthroat Cavern, I was able to nail down what makes an escape game great for me personally. I want to play the game and somehow forget that I am in an escape room. I want to be fully immersed.

I was hooked on searching out and playing only the escape games that I thought could deliver this feeling.

As I researched, looking for more truly special escape room experiences, I compiled lists of the most popular recommendations. I was communicating with more and more experienced players. I was telling them about my discovery about that feeling of forgetting I was in an escape room. I would ask them for their favorite games and explain that I was only interested in this type of experience. I searched for rooms that were bigger, longer,and more challenging. I wanted rooms that looked great and played great, with cool tech, clever puzzles, and surprise twists. I longed to feel the extra effort that the creators had put in to craft something special. I told other players that I had no desire to play poor quality rooms. I felt ripped off when paying the same price for those lesser experiences. 

More than once I was told by these people that I looked up to that this was a phase that would pass. I would learn again to value lower quality games and just enjoy those experiences for what they were. 

A Maturation Of Expectations

Over time, I did find myself having the urge to book escape games I had previously ignored. My addiction needed to be fed and these were games left unplayed. So I rationalized, since there was less travel involved, and they might be fun… why not? After doing this a few times I realized the prediction from those experienced players had indeed come true. I was having a good time, a much better time than I had imagined playing any average escape room.

The joy of just playing escape games was still there.

I enjoyed utilizing my skills. In easier rooms, my teammates and I could be sillier and less stressed, knowing we had plenty of time. I could still discover even one new puzzle or new prop. I would find a great interaction in a place I never would have expected it, and that alone often made the experience worth it. I could quest for and love some of the most immersive and epic escape games in the world and at the same time, I could appreciate almost any escape game for what it was. 

The Universe Is Expanding

As my own experience level grew, I developed more of an interest in the industry of escape rooms. 

I became curious about the owners, the creators… the people with ideas. I became especially curious about ideas that pushed the boundaries of what escape rooms could be.

For example, I played Popstar’s Room Of Doom at SCRAP in San Francisco, California. In this actor-driven escape game, we entered a time-loop that reset each time we made a mistake. Although it was rough around the edges, it left me thinking for hours about how the concept could be repurposed for different settings, or become its own genre of escape room.

The escape room community also introduced me to some escape room adjacent activities. I learned about puzzle hunts, the haunted house industry, and escape room enthusiast meetups and tours. I never would have tried immersive theater if it weren’t for conversations with escape room players who assured me I would like it. I went to The Speakeasy in San Francisco and Sleep No More in New York. These helped strengthen my appreciation for immersion and led to even more questions about what future escape rooms can become.

When I played the spectacular The Man From Beyond at Strange Bird Immersive in Houston, Texas, it blew me away with its style, depth, intimacy and commitment. It wasn’t one of those experiences where we could scan the room, trying to get a jump start on solving things by looking for puzzles and locks while some briefing video played on a screen. An event happened, and we were witnessing it and contributing to it. We were so involved that the game clock didn’t matter. In fact, we were fully enveloped into the world before we started any gaming. We were engaged in a cohesive experience from the opening moments through our exit. 

This gave me hope and excitement that there are creators out there building something new that will captivate me. How many creative directions can escape rooms go?

A New Phase

My current obsessive focus is on finding companies that are doing something special. They are creating escape room experiences that are beyond the norm: something different, something bigger… something I didn’t see coming. 

But I didn’t see any of this coming. This is just one person’s journey through the world of escape rooms. It is hard to believe what that journey has provided me: travel, new experiences, community, and excitement for what is coming. It all came from that suggestion, “We should try one of those escape rooms.”

Our world is paused and I miss playing escape rooms. That statement sounds silly. It sounds like I miss playing games. It seems trivial. But escape rooms offer so much more than gameplay.

Room Escape Artist uses the tag Escape Immerse Explore for their escape room tours. Those three tenets of play are some of the most important motivations for people who enjoy escape rooms. Those three words demonstrate how much more there is to escape rooms than the game itself.

As players, we have different reasons for playing these games, and now, different reasons for missing them.

Escape

Escape From Your World

Most escape games are mission-based adventures. They’ve grown beyond the one goal of challenging teams to actually escape from a room before the time runs out. Still, the term escape room can have a negative connotation to those who are nervous about a potentially scary, claustrophobia-inducing, or unsafe activity. 

If I reframe the term “escape,” however, it is the very thing we are all looking for.

It is part of human nature to try to temporarily escape from our realities, problems, and worries. Books, theater, television, movies, and even a trip down to the local pub are all proven tools used in our quest to escape. So are games. Escape rooms in particular are a good way for us to leave it all behind for an hour. We are forced to unplug and disconnect from the outside world, the world where our responsibilities live. Escape games let us forget all of that and have something more fun in mind for a while.

In a time of uncertainty, to play an escape room would be a literal escape.

Immerse

Enter a Constructed World

Immersion is when we transition into the reality of another world. Immersion can be addictive. Books, video games, and even sports fandom all offer levels of immersion. 

In an escape room, we are actually enclosed inside a 3-dimensional physical world, complete with a story, characters, and sound and lighting effects. An escape room experience is different from sitting in a darkened movie theater, buckling into a theme park ride, or running single file through a haunted house. In an escape room, we explore a real space where our actions affect the environment. The game world was specifically designed to transport us to a different reality where we can be someone else and do unusual things.

Explore

Discover the Unknown

Searching and exploring are components of most escape room designs. People love to explore. We like to discover secrets: secret messages, secret motives, lost items, and hidden rooms. We like to snoop inside the medicine cabinet when we use the restroom at someone else’s house. So of course we love the idea of being turned loose in an unfamiliar space and encouraged to explore a haunted mansion, a wizard’s chamber, or an evil villain’s lair. We want to use our hands to interact with objects. We want cabinets to pop open. We want to feel as though we have discovered something that no one else has seen for a long time.

Understand

Where Everything Make Sense

Real life is messy. Things often don’t make sense. We want our actions to be meaningful. 

In the constructed world of an escape game, our discoveries lead to everything aligning into tidy little solves. It’s immensely satisfying when our actions resolve in ways that make sense.

Compete

The Thrill of Winning

Competition is a motivator for some escape room players. People like to feel smart. We like to win. The simple idea of solving a series of puzzles in a given time period can alone be a strong motivation. We get to compete against the clock and the other teams. When there are leaderboards, we can try to set record times. Many escape rooms calculate escape percentages to signify the degree of difficulty. Many players calculate their personal escape percentage to measure their own skill. With the ever-present risk of losing, we play for the thrill of winning.

Contribute

Shared Victory

Escape rooms are team activities. For the time we are in the game, we are all contributing to a common goal. Most escape rooms rely on different types of intelligence. With a diverse team, we have the brain power to solve together what would be impossible alone. Escape rooms are a place to make a valued contribution to a larger group effort.

Complete

I did a thing!

According to the 2019 Escape Room Enthusiasts Survey, accomplishment was the strongest motivation to play escape rooms among those surveyed. We like to complete things. It feels good to try something, struggle with it, and then succeed. We want to look back on it and brag about it. Escape rooms are packaged for completion. 60 minutes later, we can leave with a tangible accomplishment of the day.

Collect

My name is Richard and I am an escape room addict.

Many escape room players like to count how many rooms they have played. And after we’ve counted the individual escape rooms, we count the number of states and countries where we’ve played. We make lists and spreadsheets. We review the rooms, rate them, and rank them. We make lists of games we would like to play, and then cross them off our lists. And that feels good, because there is that uneasy feeling of rooms left unplayed.

With the World on Pause

With so many businesses closed across the country and across the world, we miss a lot of things that we’ve come to take for granted as part of daily life. It might sound odd to say I miss escape rooms. It sounds trivial to say I miss playing games when I consider the magnitude of other comforts we are all missing right now.

The thing is, it’s not that I miss the gameplay. There are so many reasons to play escape rooms, and those are the voids I feel. I miss my escape.