The Number One Question We Get Asked… How do you come up with all the game ideas?
It truly is a great question and if you looked at my business plan from years ago when we were opening Escape Games PDX in Portland, I had a whole section on hiring this process out because I didn’t think I was creative at all. Turns out, I have a small amount of design and game theory knowledge but the best thing I learned was to hire someone who’s even better at it than I am!
Typically, we brainstorm room themes first and those ideas can range from something very “normal” like a prison cell, or in our case Prison Heist, or maybe a murder mystery idea like our Film Noir: The Dark Rose. Sometimes, however, we get a little crazy and come up with some fun off the wall ideas! Our newest location is set to have a competition based room that will have time travel from the old west (yes, still sounds like something you’ve heard of) but the flip side is that you’ve gone into the future but the future as imagined from 1985 with a dystopian twist-and it gets even stranger from there. We like to keep pushing the envelope with our games but still give you some of the familiar to relate to.
Once we’ve come up with the general theme and storyline, we must decide on the player count that we want in the room and the challenge level. This is one of the harder elements of design since we still have a vast majority of our players that have never experienced and escape game but also a cult following of escape enthusiasts that have done tons of rooms-even up to 763 rooms! We like to design our rooms to have what we refer to as a dynamic play, where smaller groups on the team can split up and be solving more than one puzzle path at a time so you stay engaged for the entire hour. We try to mix in many different kinds of puzzles so that everyone feels like they can have something to solve. Like my mom doesn’t ever think she’s going to be of any help in the rooms, but we always put a puzzle in that she can solve and gives her a chance to feel like she’s be a contributing member of that game. (My mom is really smart but doesn’t think she “puzzly smart” and we hear this often, so we make sure the games are designed with everyone in mind!)
At the end of the day, no matter the room theme, game size or challenge level, our number one goal is that you have fun. That you feel like you’ve been on a journey and to find some surprise and delight in that journey, even if you don’t technically escape in the hour timeframe. I didn’t “escape” a room until I had 3 games under my belt, but I had fun in everyone of them and that got me hooked! If we’ve made you smile or laugh or high-five your teammates, then we feel like we’ve designed the game right. And then we start thinking of the next room we can build…
