What Makes The Escape Experience Amazing And What Tears It Apart: Main Points?

Escape room experience can be super fun – or totally devastating. What determines our happiness level after finally escaping (or simply leaving) a locked room is the thoughtfulness of puzzles, atmosphere and overall design. Today let’s find out what creates a truly special escape experience, and what can rob any excitement from even the most loyal visitors.

Ways to create a thrilling escape experience

To be able to enjoy the puzzle, the guests should feel like something new and totally unpredictable is going on. But they shouldn’t get stuck for too long, or it won’t be fun anymore, just painful. Try to stick to these important rules:

• Puzzles must be original. Sure, you can be an experienced escape room creator, so you may be thinking about reusing your intellectual property at some point. Just. Don’t. If a person liked your quest, there’s a big chance they’ll return for more. Repeating puzzles is the greatest no-no, and using certain elements within a single room once also counts. Be creative and find ways to surprise the visitors.
• Make everything movable. Or mostly everything. It’s important because people usually want to touch, rotate and hold every nook and cranny they can get their hands on. It’s like when you’re playing an adventure game on computer: you click on all the objects in a new stage hoping something interesting will pop out. Don’t cut out this opportunity manually, let your guests have fun searching the place to its fullest.
• Locate hidden items where they can be found. While generally escape room makers do not consider searching for objects as puzzles, you can certainly make it work. Just make sure the keys and clues are hidden in some interesting places, where they’ll be fun to look for. Test your location on relatives or friend: the escape room experience is solid if people don’t search for the key more than 5-7 minutes, but still feel incredibly smart after finding it.

Ways to break escape experience (hint: don’t do that!)

So, you’ve designed a perfect escape room. Every puzzle is tested, no broken tech is involved, and every riddle is original. Nothing can go wrong, you might think? Then check if you have any of these problems:

• lots of distractions (useless objects not involved in the main quest);
• no hint timing;
• no introduction / too long introduction;
• no debriefing.

The last two are especially important, as they determine the overall mood and the final impressions. Make sure you’ll pay attention to creating a unique way to get into and out of the story, and the visitors will have an experience they’ll never forget.

If you want to see everything live, then come to us in the Quest Factor.