Category: The Lift Escape Rooms

When I first opened The Lift Shaft I had a little devil on my shoulder (also in the form of my partner and friends) shouting into my ear that the 2.1×2.1 meter, top floor space of an upright container I had just rented just wouldn’t work. For a moment, in all of the noise, I almost believed that too.

I hear this often “I’d love to build an escape room, experience, something, but I just don’t have the right space.” but the truth is there is no such thing as “the perfect space”. There’s just space… and what you do with it.

My first fault in designing was not the space I had chosen but how I utilised it – but as I have grown as an experience designer I’ve fallen in love with and leant into this untouched thought… I can create anywhere.

The Power of Contraints

I think I may have touched on this in every post I have made but it really does bleed into my ethos of design. Space is one of the best constraints to have in design, especially if ‘unique’ is your thing.

Every creative person knows that limitations can be a gift — but in spatial design, they’re often your secret weapon. When you can’t rely on spectacle, you’re forced to think differently. You focus on tension, pacing, storytelling, and how players interact with the world around them.

Every space I have designed for has needed that something extra. Personally, I was never interested in building another space ship, Sherlock Holmes or wizard themed room so the spaces I have found helped in shaping my experiences into something unique, intimate and full of character.

Design WITH the Space, Not Against It

When you walk into a potential venue, don’t start by imagining how to hide its flaws — look for what makes it special. What’s the natural personality of the space? The texture of the walls, the hum of the lights, the echo — these are all storytelling tools. They’re clues to what the experience wants to be.

A low ceiling might suggest tension and claustrophobia. A random alcove? That’s a hiding place for a… wooden cross (That’s a nice little tip for Lock & Rock so bear that in mind!).

The trick is to collaborate with the space. Let it tell you what kind of story it wants to hold. Something I have learnt in my many years as a musician, is that you you’re not fighting the instrument into submission. You’re having a conversation with it and the same should stand when designing – converse with the space. It’s telling you things and we should all listen.

Removing Peripheral Awareness

What is Peripheral Awareness? It’s something that most escape room designers want to retain. Solving puzzles in an escape room almost always requires your team to have peripheral awareness – and we help this along in our design wether we use sounds, smells, colours or lights. We pull the attention of our players around the room.

What if we don’t want that? Imaging an experience that requires focus and attention on a small, intimate space. An experience that involves the participant to forget everything around them.
It’s a tool that really helps when designing for small, intimate spaces and something I learned in my time as a professional magician.

Some may call that misdirection and while it’s similar, it is different. As a conjuror I’m trained to pull the attention away from the sneaky stuff happening right in front of their eyes. Removing someones peripheral awareness if pulling them in closer, letting them see everything while forgetting everything else around them.

Pulling focus in works as well, and sometimes better, than having many points of focus in a large room.

Making the Small…. Big

Let’s get practical for a second. If you’re designing in a small or awkward location, there are a few tricks that can make the space feel expansive:

• Design the journey, not just the layout. Think about emotional flow before physical flow — moments of pressure and release.
• Play with light and sound. These tools can “stretch” a room in the player’s imagination, creating distance and atmosphere. Darkening or lightening a corner can have a massive impact on the perceived size. Different levels of sound create distance in the players minds.
• Use verticality. Don’t just build out — build up (and down). People rarely look above or below eye level in games. Changing this can add levels to your experience. In The Lift Shaft we designed puzzles that require the players to look higher than eye level. This plays as a reminder of the size of the space and creates more tension.
• Keep movement purposeful. A small space can still feel dynamic if players are always chasing meaning, not just walking around. Even if it’s following the walls in one direction around the room, if there is a narrative purpose then it will feel energetic and pressured.

Remember: immersion doesn’t come from square footage. It comes from focus, rhythm, and imagination.

The Real World….

I’ve built escape rooms in places that many people wouldn’t look at and the immersion and design is what people praise it for. They are memorable for the uniqueness it helped inspire.

Mayday Airways is a good example of utilising a space that was small and awkward. A small passenger cabin with one row of seats and one door leading to the cockpit. It’s tight… but that’s what will make the experience so immersive and realistic.

Tried moving on a plane? Imagine solving puzzles on said plane. It wouldn’t be comfortable. No one would question the space though. The space gave me many a constraint to work with and that has driven me to make it something special.

The Magic of Making Something from Nothing

Every designer dreams of the perfect blank canvas — but in truth, the most interesting work often comes from painting over the cracks.

You don’t need a warehouse to build wonder. You just need imagination, a willingness to listen to your space, and sometimes, yes — a literal hole in the wall.

Because when players step into your world, they won’t care about the square footage.
They’ll remember how it felt.

In escape room design, creativity is often the main currency — the thing we’re all chasing. We want our players to be surprised, engaged, maybe even a little disturbed (in the best way). But too often, our own creative instincts get fenced in before we even begin. Why? Because we picked a theme.

Designing a heist room? You’re now in a bank vault. Expect lasers, money bags, and keypads. Building a prison break? Hope you enjoy padlocks and metal bars. The second we land on a traditional genre, we unknowingly accept a set of design limitations — a box that shrinks our freedom before we’ve even started to play.

So how do we break that box? How do we design experiences that invite creativity instead of suppressing it?

I want to talk about designing for creative freedom.

The Trap of Genre-Locked Design

Certain themes come with heavy baggage. They carry expectations not just for story, but for puzzles, aesthetics, tone, even the kinds of props you’re “allowed” to use.

A haunted asylum might discourage you from including bright colours or whimsical logic. A military bunker room probably won’t feature a poetic riddle or a surreal audio puzzle. Before you’ve written a single line of narrative, your hands are already half-tied.

There’s nothing wrong with classic themes — they’re popular for good reason. But if you’re not careful, they become cages. The world you build starts dictating what kind of fun you’re allowed to have inside it.

How to Design for Freedom – Some Principles

1. Theme-Flexible Concepts:
   Most experience or escape rooms designers will start with a theme or genre but not a broader general or abstract concept. Memory, Sabotage, Control or Redemption are concepts that can be built into. They create space for you to invent and bend logic to surprise your players. They’re flexible enough to hold wildly different ideas under one roof.
2. Hybrid or Surreal Worlds:
   Consider creating worlds that mix genres or break the rules of reality. A liminal hotel where each room is a different reality. A mindscape where personal memories distort space and time. These settings give you permission to get weird — to shift tone, mood, and mechanisms as and when.
3. Puzzle First, Story Later (Sometimes):
   I will probably get crucified for this suggestion but hear me out! Sometimes, and I really do mean sometimes, an interesting and creative puzzle coming first can be a great ‘reversal of engineering’ that can lend itself to more fun and original ideas. I liken this to starting a puzzle with one piece and adding the rest around it, rather than having a puzzle and finding the space for that one piece.
4. Let Players Shape the Narrative:
   Designing games where the story is influenced by the player — their choices, their pace, their path — allows you to break linear storytelling. A branching structure or reactive host means you can include more diverse mechanics and moods, without needing everything to match a rigid storyline.
   
   

When to Embrace Constraints – and When to Break Them

Constraints aren’t always the enemy. In fact, limitations can force us to think more creatively. Physical space, player count, budget — all of these are valid and often necessary design filters. I’ve used these very same constraints in my escape rooms.

The trick is to choose your constraints consciously, not inherit them automatically through tired themes.

Ask yourself:

• Is this theme helping me focus, or is it closing off ideas too early?
• Can I subvert the genre I’ve chosen in unexpected ways?
• What assumptions am I making without realizing it?

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is throw out the map and start drawing your own.

Some Tips When Expanding Your Creative Horizons

• Mechanic-First Design Prompts: Start with a cool input or player action, then build around it. (e.g., “What if a puzzle involved holding your breath?”)
• Borrow from Other Mediums: Pull inspiration from theatre, film, dance, poetry, dreams. Anything that doesn’t start with logic.
• Design Something Illogical On Purpose: Give yourself permission to design a nonsensical or symbolic puzzle, then see what emerges.
• Use Creative Constraints, Not Literal Ones: Instead of limiting what props or tech you can use, try limiting mood or emotional tone instead.
  
  

In The End, Design Like No One Is Watching

The most memorable escape rooms and immersive games are often the ones that feel like they came out of nowhere. They don’t remind you of the last three rooms you played. They feel like someone let their imagination run wild, then figured out how to make it work.

Designing for creative freedom is about making space for risk, for play, for strange ideas that don’t fit into categories. Not every game needs to defy genre — but if you’re craving something different, give yourself permission to design outside the box. Or better yet, redesign the box entirely.

Your weirdest idea might just be your best one.

As I play more and more escape rooms I increasingly see more venues overlook the experience set around the rooms themselves. It’s great that a lot of thought goes into the puzzles of said rooms but the energy in before and after the event seems to me to have floundered a little.

A truly unforgettable escape rooms is so much more than clever puzzles, tech, the generation of room – it includes every touch point from the moment teams arrive to long after they have left.

First Impressions Matter: Customer Service & Hosting

Let’s start with the welcome. I have had the misfortune of walking into venues that offer an experience, be it an escape room or other immersive event, and feeling like I have inconvenienced my host. The impression us owners and hosts give to our players the very moment they turn up will stick with those players for a long time. It’s very high up on the “Will I visit this place again” list and one bad experience can cost you a returning player.

So you have happy and smiley staff welcoming the players in the best way possible, great! But are they knowledgable and enthusiastic about the job at hand? Making sure your hosts know the rooms, venue and history of the business can not only help your hosts answer questions the players have but also create a report with more experienced players. Enthusiasts are always up for a good discussion about escape rooms, especially the one they are about to play or have just played. Report and good conversation sticks with people and are more likely to recommend your rooms as a result.

The waiting room (If you have one) or the system you have in place to welcome teams in the first place is also a really important factor. I, personally, don’t like the ‘office space’ feel to a lot of waiting/briefing rooms. It doesn’t mean those venues are bad but some thought into where and how the players are greeted and briefed goes a long way. Pulling people into the experience immediately adds extra oomph to the experience.

Hints: Immersion vs. Disruption

In my opinion there is nothing worse than a hint system that sounds robotic. What I mean by that is reading a hint that reads like it came from ChatGPT (And before you say anything, you can tell difference).

Obviously, if your room stars an AI computer that delivers the hints then you might get away with this – as long as it’s obvious you’re not actually using AI for the hints – that’s a conversation for another blog! But a little human element really helps hints gel with the players. Wether they are typed up or spoken out loud, having your host control a hint system allows for a more natural conversational flow within the game. It becomes an immersive point of contact as well as ‘just’ a hint system. And knowing that your hints are being given to you by your host tells the player syou have a host that is paying attention to your game.

That all being said timing, tone and style of delivery are all things that need to be thought through and adhered to. Two of our rooms involve typing out the clues – my hosts need to be attentive and ready to help when it is needed. Asking for a hint and waiting for almost a minute for the hint to arrive is something I think most of us have experienced and it breaks the immersion instantly (Stop putting one host on multiple games!).

The tone and style of your delivery can obviously be whatever fits the theme of the room – but that human touch can really help relax the players. If your hint sounds to abrupt, solid or uncaring then it can frustrate players if they have not fully understood your hint.

Photos & Souvenirs: Cementing The Memory

I genuinely get upset if I leave an escape room with no photo opportunity. If I have left with no callback to the experience I instantly think that the business has missed a trick that in all honesty is simple to rectify. There are 3 very important things I feel should be followed when taking and delivering team photos:

1. Make it more than just a photo: Take a photo and use a system that puts the team name on it and/or your game logo! We’ve all been in a position where getting that shot of you and your family or friends on that rollercoaster is going to cost you an arm and a leg – well not here! Most escape rooms give this out for free and will stay with most players for a very long time so fancy it up a bit, it creates value.

2. Deliver it as soon as possible: If you do send photos, the quicker you do, the more memorable it is. Don’t wait a day or two – or even worse a week (Which I have experienced). Build it into your hosts reset routine. There is nothing better than getting that team photo right away – it keeps the conversation going and keeps the buzz buzzing.

3. Make the photo itself an experience: Add some costumes or think about how to frame your photos. Create an area in your rooms that feels more than a photo shoot than just a team photo. Make it fun and engaging. It will feel as though your players are getting more for their hard earned cash!

And of course, if you are taking photos, it pays to train your hosts in framing those photos well. There’s nothing worse than half a team photo be the rooms ceiling.

Photos are great, but what about an actual souvenir?! There are a handful of rooms that I have gotten badges from, along side the time card, but what if you got something else? We give theme specific tokens from each of our rooms. This also makes them collectable. Don’t go bust over your tokens – people are not expecting a gold ring for completing your room. The added extra, however small, will feel expensive.

Final Thoughts

At my core, I believe escape rooms are a form of live storytelling. That means every detail matters: the way you’re greeted, the atmosphere of the lobby, the quality of the props, the personality of the host, the way hints are woven into the narrative, and the care taken after the game.

A good game is fun. A great experience is unforgettable. That’s what we’re here to create.

When you think back to your favourite escape room, is it just the puzzles you remember? Or is it the way it made you feel? The story you became part of? The people who brought it to life?

That’s the magic we chase every day.

Whether you’re new to escape rooms or a seasoned player, next time you visit one, take a moment to notice the little things. Because the game might bring you in — but it’s everything else that brings you back.

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.