Category: The Lift Escape Rooms

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.

(And why it should matter to you, too)

Let’s be honest, the escape room industry has blown up over the last decade. They are almost everywhere these days and if you are reading this, you’ve likely played a fair few.

You’ve probably stopped a ticking bomb from going off somewhere, stopped a virus from escaping a lab, solved a mystery in a world Sir Author Conan Doyle would be proud of or searched for buried treasure in a lost tomb.

Don’t get me wrong, these can be stunning themes in an escape room but even as I was typing that last paragraph I just felt a sense of… deja vu. It’s too familiar and I’ve seen those words in too many room descriptions…. And that’s the problem.

In an industry thats grown as much as this has it does feel like it’s hitting a peak and it makes me wonder wether the recycling of themes and puzzles has something to do with that. It feels like the magic of surprise is getting lost somewhere.

So What Makes An Escape Room Truly Unique?

It’s not going to be just a different shade of paint or a new clever puzzle that’s going to make your room unique. When I put my first room together, I could’t wait to tell people we were the only lift shaft escape room in the UK (As far as I know!) but this isn’t enough.

A unique theme is great if it is truly unique but I’ve seen the word ‘unique’ on themes that are abundant, so the effect wears off rather quickly. However, we were still given that ‘unique’ stamp of approval by our players.

THE WHERE, HOW AND WHY

Let’s start with the WHERE…

I don’t think I would be the only person to say your premises is really important when it comes to an entertainment venue such as ours. That being said, even the premises stop being unique after a while.

As I write this my business has been in operation for little over two years and in that time I’ve nurtured an ethos when creating experiences – always create to the space – as in, never have your idea before you find a venue.

Our first room was, and still is, the top half of a vertical shipping container – it already screams unique. And so we set out to create a game that worked in that space. We certainly couldn’t create a pirate ship! It was industrial, small (It really is! 2.1 meters by 2.1 meters!) and plain (Which pretty much worked in our favour).

A lift! I shouted out loud while mulling over ideas. Nothing clicked though – I’ve seen lift escape rooms and I could find a coherent storyline that felt good enough. But then, from that, was born The Lift Shaft. Ever since then I’ve never looked at a shop front or a large multi roomed complex to run my games. What gets me excited is finding that totally different space that could hold an experience – because from that, often, comes something just a bit different.

So maybe more experiences in this totally different kinds of spaces will spice up the experience a little.


The HOW…

What do I mean by the how and why do I think it’s important?

How is exactly what is sounds like. How did you do it? Did you buy a ready made room and install it? Is build everything yourself? Was your vision built by someone else?

Each of those has it’s merits… but I would put a lot of money on knowing which one you would say allowed for a more unique creation.

Buying a ready made escape room puts you on the back foot from the start. You’re buying a room that is almost certainly being used elsewhere so your uniqueness is already evaporated. Although this doesn’t seem to be happening as much these days as decent build companies usually take president.

Now, I’m not saying everyone has to do what we did but it certainly helped gives us that unique twist… That being we hand built everything and recycled as much as we could. OK, so the second part of that was what we focused on. Anything from street finds, car boot sales or family and friends clearing out could be a puzzle or task and much like our venues, paved the way for unique puzzles.

So, look at the things you’re going to throw out – can it be a puzzle? If yes, you’re likely onto a winner and saving some landfill space at the same time.

WHY does this matter?

You might read that and think…. Well, that’s obvious! But I think there are a few things that some people forget.

Consider what you want your players to actually feel and when. For me, aside from the obvious, I want my players to be wowed from the moment they walk into the room. A gasp from the monochrome vision overload of Comic Chaos, the apprehension of stepping into a small delicate lift shaft or the rush or walking into a basement rock bar – it’s an amazing feeling to have people say you’re unique before the game has even started.

That is what I think the industry should strive for – making people believe you’re unique before the game has even started.

There is a lot more I want to write about this but I’m going to split it up so it’s not too much in one go so stay tuned!