Escape Room Objectives and Goals

When you enter an escape room, your eyes are usually closed so you wouldn’t know where you came from. This trick helps to get you immediately lost in the new world: the decorations look entirely different from the lobby and the lounge zone (if there is one), so you feel that the adventure has properly begun. Time to check the escape room objectives! You didn’t forget to remember these bits of information, hopefully! After all, they define whether you beat the escape quest or run out of time trying.

You may find it surprising, but many players enter escape rooms thinking that they only need to open the door and get out. This may lead to confusing situations, as there’s always an unlocked door right from the start of the challenge. If one of the players didn’t bother to listen to escape room goals explanations at the briefing, there’s a perfectly good chance that they will open that (forbidden) door and proclaim that they won the game!

This statue is not a simple decorative element. It hides something valuable; maybe even the artifact you need!

Most Common Escape Room Objectives

There are many genres of escape rooms, and the style often defines the grand objectives. Depending on the setting, story and the entourage, creators can produce many types of escape quest goals:

  • Open the door and escape. This is the classic version, as you have to solve puzzles in linear or parallel order to find the final key that will bring you to exit. Enter the last door, and you’ll become winners! The key often looks like the doorknob or reminds the door by the way it looks, so don’t waste your time trying every small key you find on the final door. You won’t crack it open till the very end, anyway.
  • Find the treasure. It can be a real treasure, like when you are escaping an abandoned pirate ship, and you can also take the treasure chest with you. Of course, you’ll need to open it, so that means that your goal is technically still “looking for the right key.” Also sometimes a treasure is represented by a particular historical document, or you act like a thief and break into a secured area to run away with the money.
  • Unravel the mystery. Most common for detective stories, but can also happen in other genres like sci-fi, mystique quests, horror escape rooms, etc. You will find the exit when you understand who the killer is, or why the space ship is abandoned, or what makes the ghost return to the room. Live actors often participate in such escape quests, as it helps to provide an immersive experience.

What types of escape room goals do you like the most? Please share in the comments so we could use your preferences for creating new exciting Quest Factor adventures!