Wiemker, M., Elumir, E., & Clare, A. (2015). Escape Room Games: "Can you transform an unpleasant situation into a pleasant one?
Escape Rooms
Grown in popularity in the past few years.
What is an escape room?
What is their appeal?
What skills are applied in playing a game?
Players need to complete a series of challenges to win. Began focused on difficult logic puzzles, and evolved into fully immersive environments with high quality props and effects.
Game Design
Complex design and and how they are played require equally complex deconstruction.
Played in a team of people, in a room filled with challenges and may be made inaccessible.
Uses a number of names: Escape Game, Live Escape, Puzzle room, Live Action Game, Adventure Room/Games
Why Escape Rooms?
Experiential at their core and appeal to players looking for a non-traditional game.
Require a diverse set of skills and knowledge and therefore appeal to team building activities.
Can be tracked back to (and share elements with) Live Action Role Playing and Alternative Reality Games.
Encourage players to think creatively and engage in critical thinking.
Multiple approaches to knowledge
Differ with challenges but encourage students to think differently, unconventionally, and from a new perspective.
Puzzles work in concert with each other.
Tend to be designed to ensure that every member of a team contributes in a meaningful way.
Connected to the theme and understandable by the players based off the information available within the room.
At its core, an escape room puzzle uses a simple loop.
Challenge to overcome
Solution (may be concealed)
Reward for overcoming the challenge
Could be more information for another puzzle, or a chain of puzzles leading to one huge final prize.
Is the puzzle integrated into the storyline?
Are the clues to the puzzle logical?
Can the puzzle be solved using only the information within the room?
Does the puzzle add to the atmosphere of the room?
Puzzles
Mental
Physical
Makes use of the players thinking skills and logic.
Deduce, correlate, decipher clues
Cognitive
Taks or twitch puzzles: Require manipulation of real world artifacts to overcome the challenge.
Used to eat up time or provide a challenge for people who do not like mental challenges.
Meta Puzzles
The answer is derived from solving previous puzzles and putting elements from each together.
Components should be designed for different skills so everybody on the team is engaged.
Linear Path
Open Path
Multi linear path
Puzzles must be done in order
Built in structure for a guided experience.
Easier for players to solve.
Can create a bottle neck effect.
Can be worked on in any order.
Normally, however the final puzzle to escape the room cannot be worked on until all the other puzzles are complete.
Tends to be more difficult for players to solve as there is not a clear indication on where to start.
Conducive to large groups of players because it gives everyone a chance to be involved and decreases the likely-hood for bottle necks
A series of linear path puzzles which can be done in parallel.
Multiple paths can intersect or paths can have different ending points
All paths could be open to the players from the start of the game, or they can be revealed over the course of the game.
Timed effect
Solution of other puzzles
Game Master
Introduces the game
Provides Hints
Monitors the game from either within the room, or via camera.
By voice: using an intercom, walkie-talking, telephone, video
In person: either always present or is summoned by a call button
Pen and paper: Slipped underneath the door
Difficulty of a room increases by limiting the hints, or by modifying how the hints are given.
Set number of hints or unlimited hints?
Earned hits or purchased hints?
Hints available on request if the game master deems it necessary to progress.
No hints
More than a lock on a box
Immersive experience
Engrossing and engaging activity that makes them loose track of time and outside concerns.
Suspension of disbelief allows them to become absorbed
Flow is important
Mental state a player can be in while playing the game.
Fully engaged in the task at hand and focused soley on it. Idea from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
When experiencing flow designers need to be aware that:
Players get an merging awareness of action while being in the current moment
Lose track of time and feelings of self-consciousness during the game
If done right, players will be rewarded intrinsically by being engaged in the challenge
Need to have agency over the solution
Happens when people are challenged and entertained
Between frustration and boredom
Mental and physical challenges
Rarely need to be physically fit or particularly dextrous: Challenge players more mentally than physically
Use of time pressure
To simulate an experience of being trapped may require the use of stairs, ladders, crawl ways or trap doors.
Incporporate various puzzles that appeal to different ways of thinking
Maths
Visual
Word
Objects to find
Can require more than 1 person to solve.
Teams should be composed of different people with different skills.
Searching
Observation and Discernment
Correlation
Memorization
Math
Words
Pattern Recognition
Compartmentalisation
Generally require someone to step up as a team leader or overseer.
Compartmentalisation
Correlation skills
Guides people to work on different areas
Competitive escape rooms
Score based escape rooms
Large scale escape event
Escape Rooms in Education
Develop skills in team working
Creative problem solving
Critical thinking
Can be themed with almost any topic
Can be used across all levels
Connected Learning has devised the BreakoutEDU kit targeted at students in younger grades to their final years of secondary education.
Purchased kits
Open sourced Kits
Imported into NZ mid 2016: Angela Lee
Students can design their own puzzle paths
Engage in teacher guided inquiry to figure out how to convey their educational message, and the complications of designing for other people.
Multiple didactic methods to debrief the experience.
Experiential method
If the experience itself is not the educational message, then there are other methods one can use to deliver educational meaning or context.
Educational discourse
How they solved the puzzles
What aspects proved difficult
Socratic discourse amongst the educator, designer and players
Gained visibility
TB Sitcom (Big Bang Theory), Talk Show (Conan) and game show (Race to Escape)
Social media has brought enthusiasts and owners together
Facebook page has over 1500 members
Escape Convention held in Stuttgart, Germany in 2015 (
Escape Room Unconference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 60 Escape room owners, designers, and enthusiasts with the intention to better understand the industry and promote the community (Scott Nicholson)
The Future of Escape Rooms
First generation: For some rooms, no theme is attached at the main goal is escaping
Second generation: Immersive elemenets: Quality of the sets and props used were elevated. Electronic and technical components were used to bring about autmation and trggered events.
Narrative was added to the immersion, implementing a story to help involve the players more
Debate to what the third generation of rooms will hold: More complicated/expensive arifacts? More immersion, including sound, smell, taste, rouch? Use of actors for more social interaction be employed, or something entirely different?
Rarely concerns raised about accessibility.
Can they be merged with other, existing forms of entertainment? Theme parts and interactive theatre?
Need more research
Worth looking into all aspects examined here in more detail
Design of rooms can be better deconstructed
Motivations of the design can be further examined
More research and critique is needed as more escape rooms get built
How are they used by corporations for training and educators for learning would be an area of interest
Need an equally valid look into the players and what motivates them
Part of gamings future