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To quote wikipedia, an escape room is a physical adventure game in which players are locked in a room and have to use elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles and escape within a set time limit. I played some 20 rooms and my friends operate a business with three rooms. I am somewhat involved so I can answer from that side too. I'm helping with designing their fourth room, which will have an ancient Egypt setting. This is their medieval room. Rooms always have a back story (which is not that important) and a setting. Popular settings are laboratories, 20's-30's mafia, ancient temples, medieval... I also remember playing a cold war bunker, breaking into a bank, solving a murder in an alley, doing Mission Impossible stuff... Puzzles can be search-based (find code written on the underside of a drawer), skill-based (manipulate a board with a ball so that it falls into the right hole), or mental (figure out a sequence of numbers). Some need to be played by two players because one is doing something with his hands but doesn't see what and the other is looking and giving him instructions. I live in Croatia and these games became very popular in the last two years. Budapest, Hungary seems to be a hub with over a hundred rooms. I have no idea how popular they are elsewhere in the world. Feel free to join with your experiences.
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Jan 19, 2017 13:35
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Doctor Malaver posted:I live in Croatia and these games became very popular in the last two years. Budapest, Hungary seems to be a hub with over a hundred rooms. I have no idea how popular they are elsewhere in the world. Feel free to join with your experiences. I travel a lot and have suddenly seen these things spring up just about everywhere over the last couple years. That was my question actually, what caused these to blow up all of a sudden? is there some big franchise company behind it?
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Jan 19, 2017 15:29
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Franchises do exist but they aren't a big thing. You can buy blueprints or even entire rooms (furniture, mechanisms, software) from them and then keep paying a monthly fee. Or partner up with them. Still, most of the rooms I played are unique and the owners enjoy making their own puzzles. As for popularity, I think it's a fad like paintball was 20 years ago or poker 7-8 years ago. For a couple of years it seems that everybody is playing it and later it diminishes to a more sustainable level.
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Jan 19, 2017 16:23
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It's a relatively cheap and fun group activity that's cheap to setup and barely has any costs to run. I can see why people would jump on the business idea.
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Jan 19, 2017 16:40
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Budapest or Hungary in general really seems to be the epicenter of this. I worked at an escape room in Vienna for about one and a half years, and my bosses were Hungarian, just like at all the other eleven (I think) rooms throughout the city. Maybe it's even more now, I dunno, after a certain point they started to spring up like mushrooms. Both playing them and working at one was/is a blast though (in both cases provided that you're working with the right people).
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Jan 19, 2017 17:59
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This is popular in the US as well; it's attracted a fair amount of press coverage. It's a quick way to temporarily occupy some real estate and turn a quick buck. Most room designs appear to explicitly rely on a game design thing called "flow theory" that I need to look into more. iirc it's also common in online escape the room games. Kotorinosu makes heavy use of it, I believe. I'll look into it a bit.
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Jan 19, 2017 18:09
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I've completed about a dozen rooms with varying groups of friends. I've had a great time every single time I went but the quality varies greatly between the companies that run them. Some people have an expectation that these are open ended challenges but they really aren't. The ones I've done have very clear linear routes you're supposed to solve the puzzles in. We've only had to brute force a very small set of puzzles. One I've done had questionable puzzles where it wasn't clear what you were supposed to do. And when you did it, there wasn't a clear sign that something happened. What I've really learned out of this is that it is really goddamn hard to design engaging puzzles.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:00
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System Metternich posted:Budapest or Hungary in general really seems to be the epicenter of this. I worked at an escape room in Vienna for about one and a half years, and my bosses were Hungarian, just like at all the other eleven (I think) rooms throughout the city. Maybe it's even more now, I dunno, after a certain point they started to spring up like mushrooms. Both playing them and working at one was/is a blast though (in both cases provided that you're working with the right people). What did you learn from organizational side? My friends quickly learned that players will try to break anything, no matter how many times you tell them that they shouldn't use physical force. They pull furniture off walls and unscrew and disassemble everything they can. You shouldn't have live sockets in the rooms because they'll try to push stuff in. It's like protecting your living room from a baby that learned to crawl. Discendo Vox posted:Most room designs appear to explicitly rely on a game design thing called "flow theory" that I need to look into more. iirc it's also common in online escape the room games. Kotorinosu makes heavy use of it, I believe. I'll look into it a bit. I haven't played Kotorinosu. I looked up flow theory and I'm not sure how it relates specially to escape rooms. Sure, you want to find that sweet spot where the game is just hard enough, but that goes for games of any kind. SettingSun posted:I've completed about a dozen rooms with varying groups of friends. I've had a great time every single time I went but the quality varies greatly between the companies that run them. Brute forcing usually happens when you need to find three or four digits for a lock but you can't find one so you try all 10 combinations. It should never be a part of the design. As for keeping the player informed -- yeah, you sometimes need to make an extra effort. For instance, solving a game opens a hatch in another part of the room. When you're playtesting, you hear a loud clack and assume real players will hear it too. But what if someone is speaking loudly at that very moment? So you put leds that turn from red to green when you solve the game... even though they might not fit the setting well.
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Jan 19, 2017 23:35
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Doctor Malaver posted:I haven't played Kotorinosu. I looked up flow theory and I'm not sure how it relates specially to escape rooms. Sure, you want to find that sweet spot where the game is just hard enough, but that goes for games of any kind. It was something more complicated involving division and reunification of information- I'll try to track it down again. Those games use that technique a lot.
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Jan 20, 2017 01:51
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I have a friend who works at one. There is one guy who comes every week with a different girl. I strongly recommend this approach.
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Jan 20, 2017 08:25
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Doctor Malaver posted:What did you learn from organizational side? My friends quickly learned that players will try to break anything, no matter how many times you tell them that they shouldn't use physical force. They pull furniture off walls and unscrew and disassemble everything they can. You shouldn't have live sockets in the rooms because they'll try to push stuff in. It's like protecting your living room from a baby that learned to crawl. Oh God, yes. If any of you who read this should ever find yourselves working at an escape room, then keep the following two things in mind: 1) Everything that can break by itself, will break, and it will do so at the most inopportune moments 2) Everything that can be broken by the costumers, will be broken, and they will do so loving everytime One example: in one of our rooms, we had a lot of decoration - clutter basically that was put into the room to enhance the atmosphere and to make looking for clues a bit harder. This decoration included a bunch of coins because the whole concept of the room was a bank robbery. There was also a massive desk with a small hole drilled into the surface that led to a small tube with a floater in it, but no water. The players had to find two bottles of water and pour them into the tube to get to the floater. After a lot of groups just throwing the coints into the tube (which made getting to the floater impossible, and they were really loving hard to get out again) we added a small sign to the desk that read "No coins please". After a certain while we just had to resort to tell people beforehand to not do anything with the bloody coins, especially not throwing them into the tube where it specifically says no to do so Jesus Christ. Sometimes they *still* did that poo poo  Working there was also pretty interesting from a psychological standpoint. We had a bunch of cameras in every room which allowed us to see what they were doing and to tell them to cut that poo poo out/help the players out when needed and just watching them tackling the various challenges was fascinating. Some mistakes/erroneous assumptions were really common to the point where we could be reasonably sure that a group would do that first; also, when a group of players struggled with a specific puzzle then it was also pretty likely that they would make certain mistakes later on too. In many if not most groups there was a pretty clear division between "leaders" and "followers" with the leaders directing the rest of the group and setting the line of thought/puzzle solving for the others. When these leaders were wrong with their assumptions or simply bad at that stuff in general in most cases this would spell doom for the entire group effort. Some of the "follower" types were so passive that they literally would just stand there and look at the others doing stuff, only themselves doing something when explicitly ordered to. Groups where most or all of the players were women (the average group size was 4-5) were best; all-male groups often would do the especially stupid stuff, tear everything apart, throw the loving coins into the loving tube and especially (and this was only at all-male groups or groups where one or two male "leaders" would order a bunch of super passive "followers" around) simply refusing to ask for help, even when they were very clearly stuck in the game. Sometimes they would also get pissy when the crashed and burned at the game, and all we could do then was to shrug and remind them that they had had the opportunity to simply ask for hints. Once I also had a group of 5, a couple with three friends. At about 20 minutes into the game the woman from the couple suddenly sat down and started to leaf through the books strewn around in the room for a very long time. I was already wondering what was up with that (because it should be pretty clear after a short while that they were just for decoration) when she suddenly started to cry and rant at her boyfriend at the same time - apparently she was angry at him because he was better at the game than she was? In any case I felt intensely uncomfortable watching a grown-rear end couple yell at each other through a bunch of CCTV cameras (while their friends didn't give a poo poo and just played on, lol) Our escape room joint was pretty good all things told, even though the location was a lovely hole in the wall, think mouldy 100 year old basement. I'm pretty sure the whole thing was a scam in the sense that most of our income was never ever reported to the authorities and we mere workers were in perpetual fear of the taxman comg for a surprise visit (because officially we were all registered as earning only ~100€/month and got all the rest of our money in cash); one of us wasn't even a EU citizen but instead a Turkish one even though she had spent virtually all of her life in Germany and Austria and once broke down crying because she was afraid of being deported. The owners were also kind of lovely, only spoke broken German and were constantly trying to con not only the taxman, but also the customers and even us workers (we had to be super vigilant that we would get the money we had actually worked for and not some arbitrary lower amount, for example). On the other hand the whole thing being a weird scam meant that we felt free to scam the owners themselves, pocketing the money of walk-in customers for ourselves and boozing/smoking weed after and sometimes even during work like there was no tomorrow. A pretty good job, all things considered 
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Jan 20, 2017 12:30
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System Metternich posted:After a lot of groups just throwing the coints into the tube (which made getting to the floater impossible, and they were really loving hard to get out again) we added a small sign to the desk that read "No coins please". To me that would be a huge sign to say the coins are very important for something, and throwing them in somewhere is probably very important, or throwing anything else I could find into the hole (not including water). Or no coins please is an anagram.
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Jan 20, 2017 14:17
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Comstar posted:To me that would be a huge sign to say the coins are very important for something, and throwing them in somewhere is probably very important, or throwing anything else I could find into the hole (not including water). Or no coins please is an anagram. This may be the of the mindset of the people he was complaining about, but I've tempered my expectation of these puzzles to be "if it's possible to do a thing, and I have not been explicitly told not to do it, then eventually doing the thing will help solve a puzzle". That sign would not be clear enough to discourage that behavior from me at least if I didn't find water at a reasonable time. Perhaps make the hole too small to shove coins in but large enough to fit the spout of a funnel, which is hidden somewhere?
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Jan 20, 2017 15:52
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System Metternich posted:Working there was also pretty interesting from a psychological standpoint. We had a bunch of cameras in every room which allowed us to see what they were doing and to tell them to cut that poo poo out/help the players out when needed and just watching them tackling the various challenges was fascinating. Some mistakes/erroneous assumptions were really common to the point where we could be reasonably sure that a group would do that first; also, when a group of players struggled with a specific puzzle then it was also pretty likely that they would make certain mistakes later on too. In many if not most groups there was a pretty clear division between "leaders" and "followers" with the leaders directing the rest of the group and setting the line of thought/puzzle solving for the others. When these leaders were wrong with their assumptions or simply bad at that stuff in general in most cases this would spell doom for the entire group effort. Some of the "follower" types were so passive that they literally would just stand there and look at the others doing stuff, only themselves doing something when explicitly ordered to. Groups where most or all of the players were women (the average group size was 4-5) were best; all-male groups often would do the especially stupid stuff, tear everything apart, throw the loving coins into the loving tube and especially (and this was only at all-male groups or groups where one or two male "leaders" would order a bunch of super passive "followers" around) simply refusing to ask for help, even when they were very clearly stuck in the game. Sometimes they would also get pissy when the crashed and burned at the game, and all we could do then was to shrug and remind them that they had had the opportunity to simply ask for hints. Once I also had a group of 5, a couple with three friends. At about 20 minutes into the game the woman from the couple suddenly sat down and started to leaf through the books strewn around in the room for a very long time. I was already wondering what was up with that (because it should be pretty clear after a short while that they were just for decoration) when she suddenly started to cry and rant at her boyfriend at the same time - apparently she was angry at him because he was better at the game than she was? In any case I felt intensely uncomfortable watching a grown-rear end couple yell at each other through a bunch of CCTV cameras (while their friends didn't give a poo poo and just played on, lol) That was the most fascinating aspect to me. After the first few games I was trying to persuade friends to come to the rooms I had played and I would be ready to pay again for the same room just to sit in the corner or watch them over the video system. I really wanted to see group dynamics and how they're handling puzzles that gave my group the most problems. BTW was the goal of that room to get into a safe that had a transparent side and there were diamonds in? And players could hear a police siren? Comstar posted:To me that would be a huge sign to say the coins are very important for something, and throwing them in somewhere is probably very important, or throwing anything else I could find into the hole (not including water). Or no coins please is an anagram. NO COINS PLEASE That's an anagram? SO PLACE NOSE IN
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Jan 20, 2017 18:22
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Doctor Malaver posted:Franchises do exist but they aren't a big thing. You can buy blueprints or even entire rooms (furniture, mechanisms, software) from them and then keep paying a monthly fee. Or partner up with them. Still, most of the rooms I played are unique and the owners enjoy making their own puzzles. Poker probably would have stayed extremely popular if not for it getting (more or less) banned in the states.
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Jan 20, 2017 22:58
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silvergoose posted:Poker probably would have stayed extremely popular if not for it getting (more or less) banned in the states. thats only online poker. regular in person poker is still extremely popular
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Jan 20, 2017 23:13
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Doctor Malaver posted:BTW was the goal of that room to get into a safe that had a transparent side and there were diamonds in? And players could hear a police siren? It was indeed! 
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Jan 21, 2017 00:05
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System Metternich posted:One example: in one of our rooms, we had a lot of decoration - clutter basically that was put into the room to enhance the atmosphere and to make looking for clues a bit harder. This decoration included a bunch of coins because the whole concept of the room was a bank robbery. There was also a massive desk with a small hole drilled into the surface that led to a small tube with a floater in it, but no water. The players had to find two bottles of water and pour them into the tube to get to the floater. I think its also interesting but for the reverse because after having 'a lot' of groups throwing coins into the tube and creating 'loving hard' work for you all, then adding a sign that didn't work, and finally telling people beforehand not to and still witnessing them do it anyways that you and the group running this room didn't just remove the coins completely and save yourselves the hassle.
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Jan 21, 2017 13:10
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That's because we were all lowly students just trying to make a buck, none of us was authorised to change anything about the rooms and the bosses spent most of their time in Budapest counting their tax-free money
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Jan 21, 2017 14:27
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Blackchamber posted:I think its also interesting but for the reverse because after having 'a lot' of groups throwing coins into the tube and creating 'loving hard' work for you all, then adding a sign that didn't work, and finally telling people beforehand not to and still witnessing them do it anyways that you and the group running this room didn't just remove the coins completely and save yourselves the hassle. You are quite right. Good operators constantly fine-tune their rooms to reduce problems and player frustration. In most cases it means making the room simpler. Very rarely you need to make it more difficult or complicated. The Bank that I played in Zagreb didn't have coins as I recall so the operators had probably encountered similar issues and removed them.
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Jan 23, 2017 00:31
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Haha. The idea of a generation of people trained by video games to break and push and 'interact' with everything they possibly can in an attempt to learn something translating over to a real world game is hilarious. This one opened in Melbourne. It's basically a corridor shooter, System Shock deal. Looks great and I think more engaging than many of the other scenarios I've heard about : http://www.dimensis.com.au/ System Metternich posted:That's because we were all lowly students just trying to make a buck, none of us was authorised to change anything about the rooms and the bosses spent most of their time in Budapest counting their tax-free money Yeah, please remember where you are. These are the SA forums, 99% of the people you are talking to are teenagers working retail. Suggestions about changing anything will always be met with 'but I just work here'.
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Jan 24, 2017 02:09
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I own multiple facilities in Canada (and one US partnership). I've played ~120 games around the world across Europe, Asia and North America. European games differ in that they typically allow 2-5 players in a game, never have you paired with strangers, and are 'guided' in the sense that the host or game master will help push you through as needed. The US model packs many more players in, can pair you with others (ticket based system) and may or may not limit hints. IMO it is a 'fad' in a sense where there are many markets hitting saturation as the barrier to entry is perceived to be low (find a space, throw in some junk and lock it up, and charge players $25-30 a head for entry!) but typically only a few facilities per city truly have a strong financial performance. Within a few years only the busiest survive as the price point decreases to roughly that of movie tickets. Feel free to throw any questions my way! edit: fixing spelling errors on phone Pieces fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 24, 2017 08:16
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Earwicker posted:I travel a lot and have suddenly seen these things spring up just about everywhere over the last couple years. That was my question actually, what caused these to blow up all of a sudden? is there some big franchise company behind it? Now I really want to go try one out.
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Jan 25, 2017 04:48
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My impression from playing these games a few times is that first time players always overthink things. So, someone who has never done it before probably looks at the "don't throw coins" sign as maybe a trick. But those who have a better sense of what the actual puzzles look like probably understand that they should actually follow it. Though depending on how much variation there is between places (all the ones I've been to were part of the same franchise) that might create issues.
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Jan 25, 2017 09:41
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Pieces posted:I own multiple facilities in Canada (and one US partnership). I've played ~120 games around the world across Europe, Asia and North America. Wow, a Room Escape tycoon! That's interesting, I didn't know there was a difference between European and American games. How many players can you have? Most games here are created in large apartments and consist of two-three rooms per game. We admit more than 5 players but you physically couldn't fit more than 7-8 and it's also hard to keep them all occupied. As for the guiding, that's a matter of debate. As a player who likes competition I specifically request no hints unless asked for. Sometimes we get into arguments because a part of the team wants a hint at some point and the rest of us don't. My friends go for a family-friendly "there are no losers" approach. No timers in two rooms and the game master guides you so that you make it in time for the next group. They are also exploring a 'delivery' option where businesses order entertainment and you bring the puzzles to them. Do any of your rooms have actors? I think there's a room in Budapest that has one but we didn't have time to check it last time we were there. It seems to me like a simple and effective way to make the room more engaging and I'm surprised that more rooms don't use them. foolish_fool posted:My impression from playing these games a few times is that first time players always overthink things. So, someone who has never done it before probably looks at the "don't throw coins" sign as maybe a trick. But those who have a better sense of what the actual puzzles look like probably understand that they should actually follow it. Though depending on how much variation there is between places (all the ones I've been to were part of the same franchise) that might create issues. I remember in my very first game there was an ordinary pair of shoes as decoration and I noted the size and the manufacturer thinking those might also be clues. 
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Jan 25, 2017 17:58
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Doctor Malaver posted:That's interesting, I didn't know there was a difference between European and American games. How many players can you have? Most games here are created in large apartments and consist of two-three rooms per game. We admit more than 5 players but you physically couldn't fit more than 7-8 and it's also hard to keep them all occupied. I've done about ten here in America, more specifically the Midwest so maybe it's different other places, but the rooms generally hold between 6-12 people. Whatever the maximum occupancy is, you should divide that in half to know how many people *should* do the room. I did one with a group of friends that was supposedly built for ten people so that's what we took. There wasn't nearly enough space for all of us so we were all crowded on top of one another with half the group just standing around because we were stuck on a certain part that had to be done before we could do anything else. All of them here have a time limit of an hour. The best room I've done was based on a WWII POW Camp. It was multi-level with four or five rooms and we didn't come close to getting out. The guy who designed it talked to us afterwards and said that he was hoping to make a room that no one would get out without using many, many hints.
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Jan 25, 2017 18:45
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I've played 3 games total, 2 were with the same company and one was funded by a much more well-known venue or tourist spot for my city. The smaller venue where I played 2 games was decent, but the atmosphere could've been much better. It was for about 8-10 people and we had the option to ask for hints which pretty much resulted in a guy coming in and pointing to something, ruining the immersion. In one of the two games we played, we ended up getting stuck because a combination lock wouldn't work despite us having the correct combination. After that annoying spectacle we decided to not go back. Both the games played were in a small room that was pretty crowded given the amount of people. The third game I played which was in a tourist venue was for about 15 people which worried me as it seemed excessive. However, the atmosphere and space was much better than I had previously experienced. There were about 4-5 rooms total, including a great atmosphere/set with videos as well as an actor who provided hints as needed. He seemed to give away a bit more than I would prefer but at least it fit in to the story line and didn't break our immersion. Overall I would say the atmosphere and set matters more than the puzzles themselves, and the actor accompanying us worked better than having to pause the game to ask for explicit advice. As far as the group dynamics, I must admit that usually there were "group leaders" who led the others, myself included, and I sometimes felt like a third party to the whole event. I guess you have to have a mind for these sort of puzzles. Regardless, I had a good time. The price at the third place with the actor was pretty high though, about 3 times a movie ticket.
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Jan 26, 2017 04:41
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Doctor Malaver posted:Wow, a Room Escape tycoon! Sorry for generalizing on all aspects, but on average I think European games are more focused on the player experience while most NA games are more $$ driven (especially ones that run public ticketing instead of just private bookings). I also think that the potential for pairing teams that don't both share a language is a higher risk in European games. Our games hold between between 6-10 players maximum but like someone else stated below if you bring the maximum number of players in an 8-10 person game then communication is just going to fall apart. I personally prefer playing most of my game with 2 players (me and the SO), but half the room size +1 is a pretty safe number for most North American games. We used to run the public ticketing system but we switched to private as it did cause for some conflict between groups / the occasional customer service issue. For experienced players they often don't want hints unless they absolutely need them, but the guided method of delivering hints as required is a great newbie friendly way to see virtually all aspects of the room and to walk away feeling like they accomplished alot (a good game master can tailor their hints to be as subtle or helpful as necessary for a group). None of our rooms have any actors but I do have a friend that runs another room in town that has been successful with actors. I think that finding the help to do a consistent job as an actor for multiple games in a day would be more difficult than finding interchangeable game masters who can brief / debrief / hint / reset. We run 10-11 games in a row per themed room a day on our busiest day (Saturday) so we need to be able to churn people in and out efficiently while ensuring our games are well maintained with bakcups on hand (its still hospitality industry so every group should still feel like they got a great customer experience as well even if its a revolving door). Jummy posted:I've done about ten here in America, more specifically the Midwest so maybe it's different other places, but the rooms generally hold between 6-12 people. Whatever the maximum occupancy is, you should divide that in half to know how many people *should* do the room. I did one with a group of friends that was supposedly built for ten people so that's what we took. There wasn't nearly enough space for all of us so we were all crowded on top of one another with half the group just standing around because we were stuck on a certain part that had to be done before we could do anything else. All of them here have a time limit of an hour. The best room I've done was based on a WWII POW Camp. It was multi-level with four or five rooms and we didn't come close to getting out. The guy who designed it talked to us afterwards and said that he was hoping to make a room that no one would get out without using many, many hints. Bang on, half+1 is pretty good for a maximum size, very few rooms require more than 3-4 people to succeed unless they have some arbitrary task like 5 buttons in 5 separate places need to be pushed simultaneously. As these games have sprung up all across America with all sorts of operators there is a huge range of game quality out there. Some people have prop / set decor experience, very few have actual game design or UX experience. Unfortunately it is difficult to weed out the good games from the bad ones since even a low quality escape room will tend to get lots of good reviews on google/yelp/tripadvisor simply because its a unique experience for first timers. There are quite a few review blogs / sites out there now to help steer players towards the better experiences though (as well as a very active FB group called Escape Room Enthusiasts). Re: a game that would be impossible without alot of hints - anyone can make a game that is 'too hard' since they can just make obscure puzzles with silly logic leaps, but to make a fair, fun and balanced game is much more difficult. Ornithology posted:The third game I played which was in a tourist venue was for about 15 people which worried me as it seemed excessive. However, the atmosphere and space was much better than I had previously experienced. There were about 4-5 rooms total, including a great atmosphere/set with videos as well as an actor who provided hints as needed. He seemed to give away a bit more than I would prefer but at least it fit in to the story line and didn't break our immersion. Overall I would say the atmosphere and set matters more than the puzzles themselves, and the actor accompanying us worked better than having to pause the game to ask for explicit advice. This sounds like it was at 5Wits? Its made to be guided (and staggered timing between rooms for groups) so the actor will nudge you to help you get things done as needed. Top notch production value, and they've been around alot longer than the more common style of Escape Rooms.
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Jan 26, 2017 23:00
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It never occurred to me that the actor could be a member of the party. What's even for her to do if the players don't need help? I was imagining an actor who plays a zombie and is separated from the players by glass barriers or something. As the time passes he tears down the barriers and becomes more threatening. Or maybe an evil overlord who teases the players and sets traps for them. Ornithology posted:guy coming in and pointing to something I'm guessing their speaker system broke down that day or something because having the game master come inside for every hint is impractical for the operator and and ruins the fun for the players.
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Jan 27, 2017 01:02
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Is 1 hour a reasonable time limit for these games? I've never done them, but an hour doesn't seem like all that long of a time frame.
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Jan 27, 2017 20:17
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In all the games I've played/supervised 60 minutes was the standard maximum timeframe
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Jan 27, 2017 21:11
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I've done a couple of these with my sister and her boyfriend, and they're really fun. What are some of the stupidest things you've seen people trying to do/have done yourself to solve puzzles? The stupidest thing we ever did was when we were stuck on a puzzle that involved sheet music. I tried making words out of the music but it didn't say anything, so we were desperate for anything to do (and too stubborn to ask for clues). So we had the bright idea of playing the music on this little set of chimes on a shelf. We did that, slowly, and once we'd played the song nothing happened. We all looked at each other like "what did we really think would happen there?" Like was the tune going to magically unlock some door through the power of song? Then I read the music again and it actually did make words, so I felt incredibly embarrassed.
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Feb 3, 2017 09:29
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Gluten Freeman posted:The stupidest thing we ever did was when we were stuck on a puzzle that involved sheet music. I tried making words out of the music but it didn't say anything, so we were desperate for anything to do (and too stubborn to ask for clues). So we had the bright idea of playing the music on this little set of chimes on a shelf. We did that, slowly, and once we'd played the song nothing happened. We all looked at each other like "what did we really think would happen there?" Like was the tune going to magically unlock some door through the power of song? Then I read the music again and it actually did make words, so I felt incredibly embarrassed. I've played a room where there were notes that you had to play on a glockenspiel and when we played them, a box opened. Maybe it was magic????
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Feb 23, 2017 08:15
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What happens if someone gets the final puzzle done before anything else? Like they think it's the first puzzle but the solution allows them to exit the room
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Feb 23, 2017 10:45
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Good ones are arranged so that that's impossible. You make it so that solving the first puzzle gives you a key or item that's needed for the second, and so on. You can't just walk in an solve the last puzzle immediately because you don't have any of the things you need.
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Feb 23, 2017 12:19
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Sweevo posted:Good ones are arranged so that that's impossible. You make it so that solving the first puzzle gives you a key or item that's needed for the second, and so on. You can't just walk in an solve the last puzzle immediately because you don't have any of the things you need. Okay makes sense. Has anyone ever freaked out because they were claustrophobic and locked in a room? I could see someone having a panic attack from the anxiety
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Feb 23, 2017 13:11
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We had a couple of people going “oh, that might be a bit difficult/anxiety-inducing for so-and-so, could you please look out for them“, but that was rare and there never was actually a problem. Only once someone left the room for good because they were two small children who had been dragged there by their family and got bored, lol. We let them watch their parents fumble around through the CCTV and gave them sweets, that was fun Fake edit: and one time someone was all concerned for their parents after they had booked the bunker and because they were WW2 survivors their daughter was afraid that this might trigger their PTSD or something, but it was again not a problem at all
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Feb 23, 2017 13:52
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HOT! New Memes posted:What happens if someone gets the final puzzle done before anything else? Like they think it's the first puzzle but the solution allows them to exit the room Like someone else said, that's going to be basically impossible but what you can do and my group has done several times is opening/solving something way before we should have been able to. Either through lucking into finding something, guessing a puzzle solution before we got all the clues, or like the last room we did a key worked in a lock it shouldn't have. Each time it helped us short term but screwed us long term because we were finding things we didn't need and were trying to figure out how to use them.
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Feb 23, 2017 20:27
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Another way of dealing with that is to make it so that the order isn't important. Say the objective is to open a safe with six locks, and the six puzzles that give you the keys can be solved in any order.
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Feb 24, 2017 11:59
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How thoroughly do you scour google to make sure no one's posted the solution to your rooms online? If someone posts the solution how do you get them to take it down?HOT! New Memes posted:Okay makes sense. I'm pretty sure most rooms have a panic button that lets you out, but once someone leaves they're not allowed back in.
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Mar 2, 2017 02:11
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