There are some people in the immersive industry who say every escape room needs multiple rooms – but is that really true?
I’m challenging the idea that multiple rooms = a better experience. As escape room designers we should be aiming to break rules to create new and exciting immersive attractions. multiple rooms should be the least of our concerns.
Escape rooms can be just as immersive, challenging and memorable in a single room or space by utilising what I call the ‘Illusion of extra space’. My past experience as a full time magician has helped me understand that your physical space should be no hinderance to the world you’re trying to pull your players into.
Immersion is not defined by size.
Let’s start with one thing I have noticed being an issue with ‘some’ of the multi-roomed games I have played, and that is Thematic Cohesion.
Let me also start by saying I don’t think multi-roomed escape rooms shouldn’t exist… For instance it makes sense for a restaurant themed escape room to have a kitchen. It would be weird if that was an open plan kitchen… unless it’s a sushi restaurant – I’m digressing. But a room like that is likely to have some cohesion between the rooms – trying to find a stolen recipe would require you to get into the kitchen and it makes sense, it does not feel like that room was added ‘because it need another room’.
Where the cohesion becomes a problem for me is when I encounter rooms where the extra room has no explanation -either in why it’s there or how you get in there. I don’t want to crawl through another fire place to find an office… who the hell has an office with the only entrance being a crawl space?!
It may only be me but I start to lose focus on the rest of the game as I try to grapple with the meaning of what I had just done. I find the narrative of the game slipping away from me and it ruins the immersion for me.
I feel keeping your narrative and atmosphere controlled works best when all areas of your room make sense and more focus is put on the puzzle and story design than space design – extra rooms are not a necessity and so real thought needs to be applied here.
Puzzle and atmosphere over layout
I guess I’ve already pretty much explained how a feel here but it’s worth digging in a little further.
Comic Chaos – our my third escape room – Is a good example of what I am about to say…
Reinterpretation of the same space is something I’m hellbent on! Some of the best ‘aha’ or ‘wow’ moments I have encountered in my rooms is the ability to use space twice in a new and fresh way. As much as I feel other enthusiast or owners already boiling over that statement… it’s absolutely OK.
The idea that a puzzle should be as far away from another puzzle as possible only limits what you can do in the space provided. Comic Chaos and The Lift Shaft are perfect examples of reinterpreting and reutilising space – either parts change or open multiple times in multiple places or the feel and atmosphere of the entire room is changed – creating the illusion of extra space.
Connected, well thought out and well designed puzzles can thrive in a small space or single roomed gamed.
Pacing and Flow
As I mentioned earlier, crawling through a tunnel into fancy office or unfitting room not only makes no sense by the transition for me but ends up feeling too clunky – I’ve lost time crawling and the wow factor disappears (I will add that obviously some people like crawling around… the annoyance of crawling is purely personal).
No all rooms have clunky transitions – a simple door opening to another room doesn’t affect the flow of the game but I have definitely experienced new room reveals that slow down the game – and sometimes after an adrenaline filled puzzle solve – which is immediately lost while we wait for the new room to become accessible. Now, I can already hear you screaming “but that is just bad game design!” and you’d be correct in shouting that, but could it also be possible that the new room is the restriction here?
I also want to bring in the countless conversations I have personally had with players about how happy they did not have to go between multiple rooms. On almost every occasion it was one of these three things:
losing engagement with your team: One roomed games keep players together and focused on the game at hand boosting teamwork and engagement.
the flow of the game became convoluted: This is especially true for rooms that have extra spaces for the sake of having them. Keep things making sense. The Lift Shaft wouldn’t make sense with a large room attached to it – it’s unrealistic and breaks the immersion.
they felt the extra room became less about the puzzles and more ‘look at what I built’: We all take pride in our work as escape room owners but sometimes this can overshadow puzzle design and players feel it a lot more than some may think.
I’ve felt all three of these things in escape rooms and they don’t help in creating an experience that is enjoyed by all.
Encouraging creative design, accessibility and safety.
Accessibility and safety is something I don’t hear mentioned near enough and they are important factors.
Now, most escape rooms I have played are not entirely accessible, mostly due to them being up or down flights of stairs or in weird and wonderful places but we should do out best to accommodate as much as we can.
We have been able to accommodate more players than if we had crawl spaces, stairs or ladders to new rooms. Single rooms have allowed us to be accessible to more players – and that means more people enjoying the escape experience.
Safety for our players and for our staff is so much easier to monitor through a single room also. We’re lucky to have not had any emergencies in our escape rooms but if we did our plans to deal with them are more streamlined and simpler to implement and single rooms has allowed us to do that.
I’m a firm believer in constraint breeds creativity. Allowing your self to be constrained forces you to look at the creative process differently – how can we create an awesome immersive experience with this space? It allows us to think about depth and not breadth of our experiences and to focus on areas that we may overlook.
Players remember the experience… not the square footage.
In conclusion to this that I want my players to leave having had a great experience with puzzles within an awesome story that hopefully plucked them out of the mundane and into the incredible.
It’s not about how many rooms you have, it’s about how good your experience is. Encourage your players to judge your experiences by it’s creativity, immersion and fun – not its floor plan.