Top 3 Helpful Escape Room Tips
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: escape rooms are more challenging than you think. We’ve already shared with you three things you need to know before you play an escape room. Now it’s time you know the big secrets…
These are our 3 best escape room tips for beating ANY escape room:
1. Talk it up
If you’ve ever played volleyball (or any team sport, really) you might have heard the phrase talk it up! Simply put, your coach or captain is telling you to help your teammates out by communicating during the game. If no one communicates, a bunch of players might rush towards the ball and get in each other’s way. Great sports teams have great communication. In the same way, you need to communicate with your escape room teammates so that everyone is working with the same information. Withholding any newfound clues or genius ideas, whether intentional or not, will only eat up more of your 60 minutes. By verbally sharing everything you see and everything you think, you’ll be opening up the floor to more ideas and a more effective gameplay.
2. Spread out
By now you know that Red Door is big on teamwork, especially when it comes to creating an environment in which teamwork can be fostered. But in escape rooms, teamwork is one thing and crowding is another. While it’s definitely important to work together and communicate, a team joined at the hip will likely miss multiple clues and slow down progress. Oftentimes, game designers place clues all over the rooms and divide puzzles to function in separate parts. If everyone is gathered around one clue or puzzle, the team might miss the chance to find something in the opposite corner that helps solve it! So make like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and spread!
3. Think differently
Everything is not what it seems in an escape room. Many puzzles will require multiple attempts before you get them right. When one method doesn’t work, think of a new strategy. Don’t let yourself get stuck. If reading left to right doesn’t work, try reading right to left. This is where creativitycomes in! Linear thinking is not the only way. I recently read David Ball’s Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Playsin which he shows how reading backwards can offer a better understanding of a narrative. Reading backwards reveals the effect before the cause, the heap before the trigger. Why not try working backwards in an escape room? Trying new things can only help in this case!
Think you have what it takes to beat any escape room now? Book your next episode, try out these helpful escape room tips, and claim your bragging rights. Once you win, tell us and all your friends about it with the hashtag #reddoorescape.
