What is an escape room and why everyone loves it

Imagine you are locked in a room and have to go through a series of complex puzzles to find a way out of this room. This idea really doesn’t sound interesting at all. But, escape room (puzzle game, find the way out) has become popular again and become a new activity, attracting young people today. This genre also occupies a large part of the video game market.

Escape rooms have been around for a long time, starting with browser-based click puzzle games. Games like Takari’s Crimson lock the player in a room with a series of headache challenges. Now, this genre has appeared in real life. However, the escape room in the game world is on a completely different level. Not only stop at good puzzles, they also have to bring players to a completely new space.

“If there is a story, the player will be more immersed,” said escape room designer Adam Hameed. “They help many people feel like they are in a story or a movie.”

Hameed’s escape room game Blackbeard’s Dungeon requires players to understand the rules of the game through a pirate-themed room. Creating a space for players to feel immersed in the game world is also a very important element of an escape room. Fireproof Games’ head of design, Mark Hamilton, once learned this lesson: “I made a mistake when I first started designing The Room series. I designed the level with some puzzle ideas, but without a specific story or theme,” he explained.

“Giving an idea to design the whole level is like pulling a tooth. During this process, I realized that I had always needed to depend on the topics in each set of puzzles without even knowing it. From there, I realized that having a clear theme in each level is the most important thing in design.”

Fireproof Games developed The Room series, which requires players to solve puzzles in a bizarre house filled with boxes of interesting puzzles and locked doors. The series from mere puzzle boxes expands into large rooms in subsequent installments. “The story of a Room game is designed in the following way: how do I, reasonably, take the player from an ancient temple to jump to a spiritual room, or from a factory to move in? observatory,” explains Hamilton.

Hameed also adds that props and knowing how to use the right kind of puzzles can make the subject more vivid. In Blackbeard’s Dungeon, the player must prove he is cunning enough to join the Blackbeard pirate by escaping his prison. “Blackbeard’s Dungeon allows us to add more physical puzzles instead of electronic puzzles, which can be reset easily,” Hameed said. “A lot of escape room experts take them very seriously, as traditional electronic puzzles get boring after a while.”

In Hameed’s escape room game, the player group will start from a small bamboo crib, a small escape room within a larger escape room. To get the key to the crib, they had to find a loose bamboo pole and push it through the keyhole. The more people cooperate, the faster the process of finding this bamboo burner and the sooner it reaches the main room. It’s kind of like a tutorial – designed to get players used to playing in groups. Once inside the main area, they must find symbols, objects, and locked boxes scattered throughout the room.

They are all small pieces of a puzzle, these puzzles are usually designed to be solved by many people. The game is also designed so that the ratio of people to the puzzle is balanced, avoiding the case of players having to sit idle. “Games are designed to have at least two or three puzzles that can be solved together most of the time.” Hameed said. “Some puzzles need many people to work together to solve. Teams often have to brainstorm and discuss to find a solution. One person comes up with the original idea and another person develops it.”

Once immersed in the puzzle, the appeal of the escape room gradually takes over the player. When one person believes they can solve it, it’s hard for the rest not to participate. This is when Hamilton realized the difference between escape rooms and The Room. “I don’t think I have to rely on pure puzzles as much as escape room designers,” he says. “We were able to do more in our game with cutscenes and special effects than in the real world. However, as the escape room gets bigger and bigger, this difference is getting smaller and smaller.”

A characteristic drawback of real-life escape rooms is that you cannot confine everyone in a room when trying to create an entertaining space. That’s why when you enter Blackbeard’s Dungeon, Hameed tells everyone there’s an exit behind the red curtain. However, many people mistakenly believe that this information will lose the mystery of the escape room. But when you get hooked or try to “escape” from the room with friends, you no longer remember that exit at all. They all focus on solving puzzles.

“People really love to explore as long as the puzzles aren’t irrational. It should be fair and not too difficult. Of course, the escape room has to focus on other players – this is a multiplayer game and that makes escape rooms more fun,” said Barry Meade, director of Fireproof Games.

Fireproof must rely on sound effects to entice players. Meanwhile, according to Meade, the strength of escape rooms is the fact that they bring people closer together to solve puzzles – they make them forget the reality around them.

Hameed witnessed this for himself as he watched people play his escape room, feeling the moments of sincerity. “Family, co-workers, or friends inevitably have certain distances in their relationships with each other. But they no longer exist when they enjoy the game together.”

“I can recall many times when a mother invited her family to this experience in the hope that it would help them bond,” he said. “Players will often complain because they think it’s childish. After starting the game, they are hooked on it – teenagers will communicate more with their parents in that hour, than they do in a year. The mother will be pleased to see this bond and the father will smile.”

According to PCGamesN