Stepping into an escape room is a unique challenge, as players face crafted puzzles and mysteries. Behind the scenes, business owners must plan and design the puzzles, while also promoting their escape room to potential clients. Maintaining the mystery of the escape room adds an additional layer of challenge to the operations.
Ensuring the safety of participants is also a top priority for business owners. This includes implementing safety protocols and ensuring that staff members are trained to enforce them. Running an escape room requires careful planning, attention to detail, and a commitment to providing a safe and exciting experience for all participants.
What is an escape room?
Escape rooms are immersive games where players are locked in a themed room and must work together to solve puzzles and complete challenges in order to escape. The origins of escape rooms can be traced back to a 2004 video game simulation. The game has since evolved into a popular real-life entertainment activity, where players have a limited amount of time to decipher clues and unlock hidden secrets to make their escape.
The key to success in this game is teamwork and time management.
Take a behind-the-scenes look at escape room operations to discover how they operate like a finely-tuned machine.
1. Puzzle designing
Creating the mystery requires a lot of creativity—the primary step in the escape room operations. The puzzles are challenges the participants must solve to escape from the room.
The riddles can be anything, such as codes that the participants must decipher. That can also include physical activities like climbing or crawling.
2. Daily operations
Depending on the puzzles designed, the daily operations must center around it. The day-to-day operations may include scheduling customer appointments, managing the employee schedule, sending the puzzles, etc.
Managing daily operations can often be overwhelming. Therefore, Picktime is an online scheduling software designed specifically for escape rooms business. This software provides a convenient way for customers to book appointments and for businesses to manage their staff and schedule.
With Picktime, staff management becomes easier as it allows business owners to add their staff members to the system and assign them to specific shifts or appointments. This helps in ensuring that the right staff is available at the right time to manage the escape rooms and provide a high-quality experience for customers.
One of the standout features of Picktime is the ability to embed the Book Now button on the business’s website. This button allows customers to easily book appointments without having to navigate to a separate scheduling page, thereby improving the user experience and increasing the likelihood of bookings.
Overall, Picktime is a powerful tool for escape room businesses looking to streamline their scheduling and staff management processes. With its user-friendly interface and flexible features, it can help businesses improve their customer experience, reduce administrative tasks, and grow their business.
3. Escape room design
After designing the mystery comes creating the escape room design. The escape room is a physical space where the game occurs. There are a few aspects to consider while designing the escape room.
For instance, the environment should be very challenging for the participants but also immersive. In the meantime, the room should hold clues to help the player to solve the mystery.
4. Running a trial
After developing and designing the puzzle, it will be extensively tested before opening the doors to the public. The testing ensures that the clients can solve the mystery and remain challenging.
However, the testing also reveals any possible flaws in the game, which would help to make amendments. After mending the shortcomings, the game master will check the puzzles multiple times to give the players the desired experience.
5. Training the game master
After designing the room and mystery and running the trial, the game master should receive some training on conducting the game. The game master is responsible for overseeing the game and helping the players when needed.
The game master should be well-versed in the game to ensure the smooth running of the game. Therefore, training the game master is paramount.
6. A theme for the escape room
Identifying a theme for the escape room is essential, rather than merely putting the players in the game. There are many ways to integrate the player into the theme established. For instance, you can give the player a pretext before the beginning of the game.
That would help the player understand the context and quickly immerse themselves into the game. You can also introduce a pretext for the game to enhance the experience further.
However, there is also a focus on setting the tone for the game- for instance, heroic, adventure, suspense, discovery, competitive, etc. The trend has been very recent in the industry.
7. Using props to discover the clue
There has been a rising trend recently in using props in the escape room. The props often contain clues to solving the puzzles. They can, for instance, letters, numbers, clocks, books, maps, etc.
The props add more to the game’s mystery, making it more challenging. Most of the props used in the escape rooms are the things that people use in their daily lives. As a result, they can quickly relate to the props while preserving the game’s mystery.
8. Customer Service
Customer service is one of the essential aspects of an escape room. The escape room operators should be friendly toward the customers and attempt to accommodate customer requests.
For instance, if any customer complaint arises, the teams promptly address it and solve the issue. However, the staff should address any doubts from the players about the game and give information regarding future events or promotional events.
Furthermore, the team should monitor and mentor players’ progress when needed. The escape room operators also require various skills -for instance, interpersonal and communication skills.
However, customer service also ensures the customer receives a positive and pleasant experience. That would prompt the customer to return more often and, most likely, to refer the escape room to their friends and colleagues.
9. Promoting to the potential audience
Another essential aspect of escape room operations is to promote it to the potential audience. Promoting the escape room to the possible audience lures their attention toward the escape room.
Social media platforms have simplified reaching out to the potential audience effortlessly. For instance, with assistance from social media, it is much simpler to promote the business to the audience based on location, demography, gender, and interests.
Social media platforms are also beneficial in maintaining a solid online presence, as it is the need of the hour. The escape room operators use email marketing techniques to market the escape room to the audience.
One of the significant challenges that escape room operators face while promoting it is to preserve the mystery behind the escape room. Too much information gives away what has been created for the audience.
Therefore, it is essential to develop innovative ideas to market escape rooms to the audience. As a result, it does not give much information about what they have created for the audience.
To sum up, escape room operations can be both advantageous and challenging experiences. However, managing the operations requires a lot of thinking out of the box. To create and develop a safe environment for the player to solve the riddles.
In conclusion, obtaining an insider’s perspective on escape room operations reveals the intricacies and dedication involved in providing an immersive and challenging experience for participants. The behind-the-scenes efforts of designing puzzles, themes, and sets, as well as managing staff and ensuring safety, all contribute to the success of escape rooms. This perspective serves to deepen our appreciation for the hard work and creativity that goes into making escape rooms an exciting and enjoyable activity for all who participate.
