The Escape Room Thread

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The Escape Room Thread

Post Post #0 (isolation #0) » Wed Nov 16, 2016 5:24 pm

Post by Chevre »

Hey everyone! I'm probably not the person who should be making this thread, but I'll make it so people hopefully have a place to converge on this topic. This is a thread about escape rooms!

I've actually only done one escape room, and that was at Chicago Meet with fellow scummers: BipolarChemist: Faraday, Gammagooey, and KittyMo! It was as fun as I imagined it would be. There aren't too many in Nebraska, mostly in Lincoln and Omaha, so I've been urging my friends to plan a day around doing one over in those cities. Nevertheless, it's an interesting topic to me!

Currently I'm listening to the Room Escape Divas podcast, which (at least in early episodes) bills itself as one of two escape room podcasts. It's very chill and funny, and they do a great job of being informative and insightful without spoiling any rooms still in existence. Many of their podcasts are actually interviews with fellow enthusiasts, so there are a lot of different viewpoints and it makes for very well-rounded listening!

But what I'm most excited about is currently I'm working on an escape event for my library's teen group to be held in December. You could call it an escape room but it spans pretty much the available space of our Carnegie Library so it's pretty big! I'm working out the puzzles and flow, so I might share some puzzles in-thread so people can have a crack at them and help me edit, I guess!

So yeah! I guess people can use this thread to talk about what they've done or do mini-reviews on escape rooms they've done! Remember to be pretty sparing in spoilers; even if the room has closed, puzzles could be used in other rooms or stuff so you have to be careful! I guess the scope of this thread could be expanded to other puzzling events, too.
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Post Post #4 (isolation #1) » Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:50 pm

Post by Chevre »

The one I've planned for the teen library group is tomorrow night and I am so horrified as to how well it's gonna go :/
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Post Post #6 (isolation #2) » Sun Dec 25, 2016 2:41 am

Post by Chevre »

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/the- ... game-on-va

I forgot to share how my teen library escape went! It was actually VERY GOOD. They had a little bit of a struggle at the beginning which was admittedly my fault for creating a fairly unclear puzzle, but afterward they really began to get on the right track with everything and put stuff together. They were really impressed and wanted to go on a field trip to an actual one, which might be out of our budget and capabilities. :P
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Post Post #11 (isolation #3) » Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:07 pm

Post by Chevre »

I did a toy-room-themed one over the weekend, we made it out!

Was pretty linear, but it had some cool puzzles.
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Post Post #18 (isolation #4) » Sun Jun 17, 2018 5:35 am

Post by Chevre »

That sounds rad. But yeah books seem to be a point of contention for escape rooms. They make great scene-setting but you're just asking people to pore through them and find meanings where you shouldn't.

And the path thing is definitely something to consider. Like if you saw my notes for the SUPP ARG I had one central linear path but also tried to have later puzzles reference stuff from earlier puzzles, little branching puzzles, etc. It just helps allow everyone to have something to do. The last one I did was wholly linear and it had opportunity not to be. When I dream up designs I like, make a flowchart so that I know how clues and stuff are split up, etc.
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Post Post #19 (isolation #5) » Sun Jun 17, 2018 5:37 am

Post by Chevre »

Also: I listened to the first episode of Escape This Podcast which is like a role-played escape room done via podcast. It works really well and you can solve along with the solver. Additionally, they give you the resources so you can run it with your friends. I think it would be fun to do these with Scummers online or something if the chance arose!
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Post Post #21 (isolation #6) » Mon Jul 08, 2019 3:04 am

Post by Chevre »

Hey everyone! I went on vacation to Minneapolis this weekend and did two rooms in the area. Puzzle-specific stuff will be in spoilers.

Asylum
at Mission Manor
- This was the first time ever where I'd done a full escape room experience with people I didn't know. We had our group of three and then were told two other people had signed up. This of course generated a lot of anxiety because you never know who you're gonna get, but it was a nice younger couple who had recently moved to Minnesota. Very good customer service. They let us take a look at any upcoming room too which was nice. They also provided a list of all rooms in the Twin Cities area as well as their preferred rooms and experiences. Overall, a really great time!

Spoiler: Asylum
I think a lot of bigger-city rooms have fancy tech, but my friends had never seen stuff like this so they were wowed. This room involved pushing on pictures, shining lasers, completing a circuit with your body, and listening for a heartbeat to unlock stuff. I think it was a mostly straight path of puzzles with a little divergence in the middle to unlock some locks, but otherwise it was good. We didn't use any hints and didn't get stuck on anything for too long except a kind of hidden drawer.


Utopia
at Riddle Room
- Initially this was my first choice but the excerpt sounded a little weird to my friends, but at Mission Manor it was one of the recommended ones, so we ended up doing it the next day. I think a combination of factors made this room feel a little worse overall - we were of course more tired after having gone to the zoo earlier that day, but also it was in a weird part of town and the attendant was new and shy.

Spoiler: Utopia
Technologically I think this is the coolest room I've been in. It's set up like a "Reconditioning Room" that guides you through a set of puzzles on a grid on a pedestal in the center (my Witness senses were tingling!). They were mostly color puzzles but involved these huge complicated set pieces: behind one wall was a grid that you had to move around using two levers, another two of them involved this gigantic panel with hexagon shapes that slid out, and then you had to put together a puzzle on it. Another involved combining primary colors to get secondary colors to form a picture, one had you waiting for the lights in the ceiling to change to get the right color, etc. It just seemed like technologically it was incredibly savvy and complex. The second part was that this was actually not a utopia and about one of these color puzzles in a drawer in the bottom of the wall opened that someone had to crawl in, lie down, and get pushed back in to open a second room where there were other puzzles. The theme was that the room was brainwashing you and you had to get 8 deactivation devices from the maintenance room. It was just over all an extremely cool experience even if my friends weren't into it with all the extremely puzzly elements.


I would recommend both if you are in the Minneapolis area! The sheet also highly recommended Hospital at PuzzleWorks and Dig at the Escape the Room Minneapolis location.
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