Escape rooms are insanely popular and they have been for the past 15 years. Since the first escape room in Japan in 2007, these entertaining diversions have spread across the world gaining popularity as they go. Escape rooms combine a group experience, roleplaying, escape from reality, a surge of adrenaline and puzzle-solving, no wonder just about everyone loves them.
For real fans of escape room adventures, the logical next step is to learn to create one themselves. If this is something you’re interested in, read on to discover the essential qualities of a great escape room.
Audience Appropriateness
Before you can even begin the creative process of designing your own escape room you need to decide who you are making the room for. Whether you are creating for children, families or adults only will affect every other aspect of the room.
You need to tailor your story, your space and your puzzles to be appropriate for the age and maturity level of the people you want to go through it. If you google escape room Tucson, you’ll likely find that great local escape room facilities always have a variety of storylines and difficulty levels to suit different audiences. Since you likely only have the space and the resources for one room though, you’ll need to decide on an audience before you proceed.
Compelling Stories
Because one of the major draws of escape rooms is the immersive quality of the activity, you need to have a great storyline to support your adventure. If you’re designing a room for pleasure rather than profit, you can feel free to borrow from awesome existing stories like the Harry Potter series or a classic like Jekyl and Hyde. Doing this makes the process a lot simpler since you will have a world and a setting already created for you.
If you are hoping to commercialize your room, you’ll need to get the rights to use existing storylines, use stories that are in the public domain or create your own. If you or one of your friends has a knack for mystery writing, this can be one of the most enjoyable parts of the creative process.
Sufficient Space
Now you need to choose a space that can accommodate the story you want to tell. If you don’t have options and are locked into using a particular space, like a room in your home, you might want to reverse this step with the previous one and make sure you choose a story that suits the space you have to use.
This can be the most labor extensive and potentially most expensive part of the process. It really depends on the intricacy of your story and the world in which it takes place. For a simple children’s party, you can get by with a pretty basic room, but for more complex storylines you’ll need to fabricate more complex puzzles and be more detailed in your world creation. It pays to be creative here and to have friends that have some DIY skills.
Challenging Puzzles
Choosing the best puzzles for your escape room will take a lot of finesse. You need to challenge your players, but puzzles that are so difficult they are nearly impossible to solve can shut down the game.
You do want to use a variety of puzzles to keep things as interesting as possible, and the options are nearly limitless. You can use word problems, math problems or cyphers. Locks that require a combination are a staple in escape rooms. You can write intricate riddles or scrawl messages on the walls that are only visible in blacklight. Complex cooperative puzzles that require players to work together to perform separate tasks to complete a common goal are especially stressful and exciting.
Creating your own escape room is a challenging but doable project. Decide on your audience and develop a compelling storyline first. Match your story to the space you have and DIY the world of the game. Finally, create a variety of puzzles that will challenge but not frustrate your players. You may just find that creating an escape room is as much fun as solving one.
