Post #13 Replayability: The Challenges and Potential Rewards Part 1
If you’ve been to an escape room you know they’re usually one and done. Once you’ve solved the puzzles, found the artifact and killed the zombie, there’s no point in doing it all again. Not to mention there are so many other games to play (depending on your location, your mileage may vary.)
Note: as of writing this, we are scheduled to play “Pandora’s Box” at Trapped in San Dimas, CA this coming Sunday, October 22, 2023. I’ll make sure to do a first timer’s review in the coming weeks. Room Escape Artists reviewed the Las Vegas version in case you want to know what we’re getting ourselves into.
Cesar and I work in downtown Los Angeles, arguably home to one of the biggest concentrations of escape rooms and immersive entertainment venues in the country and maybe the planet. And if you include greater Southern California in the calculations, the number of such places gets very large. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve done about a half dozen rooms and as of this writing, Cesar is still looking for his first. We keep trying to schedule some play time, but we have puzzle boxes to build. And that brings me to the point of today’s post (I know …….. finally!!!!)
If you want to hear about a great multi game immersive experience, REA did a a pretty in depth podcast with Christian Vernon and Zac MacKrell, Creators of Doors of Divergence in New York. A unique game that can be played more than once with different outcomes. Click here to listen in. (Note: DoD is scheduled to close the end of October, 2023. We all hope they can find another venue for their most unique experience.)
Our target market for our escape boxes is corporate team building, festivals and other locations where there are large numbers of potential players. Our escape boxes will likely take less time to complete than your average escape room. We’re shooting for 20-30 minutes for 2-6 players. We’d like all the players to have the best experience possible. Unfortunately, with groups like these, spoilers are inevitable. So we’re designing our boxes with multiple puzzle solutions in order to keep things fun for everyone.
obviously major physical puzzles are pretty difficult to change. Most of our games have at least one word/letter driven puzzle and these are pretty easy to change. Our current WIP, Moriarty’s Mini Mayhem, has ten different word puzzles and five versions of a chess type puzzle. A simple ten position rotary switch allows us to change the answers for every game. This gives each team a better chance of playing a fresh puzzle. Is it more work? Yep. Ten puzzles takes more brain cells to write than one. There’s more programming and testing. And it’s one more thing that can go wrong. We have to make sure that each team gets the clue sheet that matches the puzzle set they’re playing. Not super difficult, it just requires us (me, mostly) to be sure the ADHD is locked down and everything is checked and double checked.
This blog has gone on and on so you know what that means … Part 2 next week!
Have a great day and be nice to someone.