Happy 2022, and a belated happy National Puzzle Day!
I recently came across the following video from viral YouTuber MrBeast:
When seeing this sort of content get tens of millions of views, I’m torn. On one hand, it’s awesome for escape rooms to get extra promotion amongst the masses. On the other hand, this video reinforces just about every negative stereotype out there about escape rooms, including:
They’re only about escaping.
They’re intense, scary, and/or dangerous experiences.
You’re going to be mocked or humiliated while playing them.
The puzzles and interactions are hard for the sake of being hard, and there’s no real rhyme or reason to them.
The sets in this MrBeast video are beautiful, as I’d expect from someone with that sort of production budget. But they’re disappointingly underutilized, as the players race from one room to the next, disjointedly doing one small random interaction in each. Had MrBeast just hired a puzzle or escape room consultant, this experience could have been epic.
This problem extends far beyond this one video, though. As escape rooms continue to skyrocket in popularity, there’s very little pop culture representation of them that actually does them justice.
Take for example the not-so-creatively named 2019 film Escape Room and its 2021 sequel Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. Sure, they’re fun horror films in neat environments, but they again reinforce the stereotype that escape rooms are claustrophobia-inducing, dangerous, and filled with unfair puzzles.
That’s not to say there aren’t escape rooms out there like that. But this is not representative of the escape room industry as a whole: most rooms are relatively spacious, you’re typically not locked in, there is a range of more lighthearted themes to choose from, and good escape room puzzle design is fair, logical, and player-friendly.
There’s also a trend of celebrities playing escape rooms, such as this 2019 video of Will Smith and Tom Holland with 16 million views. The entertainment value in these comes, of course, from the celebs. Yet especially in the past few years, it’s disappointing seeing them choose to play escape rooms that would have been so-so games even circa 2015. There are still plenty of rooms out there in generic office-y spaces with lots of padlocks and random searching for slips of poorly laminated paper, but the industry standard is rapidly evolving past that, in spite of the image the general public currently has of escape rooms.
A less avoidable problem is just how bad many of these celebs are at playing escape rooms. While blundering incompetence can be funny to watch, my heart sort of sinks when the final takeaway is that “that wasn’t for me.”
More interesting examples do exist. An episode of The Big Bang Theory wryly mocks overused escape room tropes with an impressive level of self-awareness. The main characters largely ignore a campy zombie on a chain as they tear through a sequence of all-too-obvious puzzles in 6 minutes. The zombie growls “Solve puzzles too fast… Slow down… Just sayin, no refund for finish early…” — echoing a problem that many players, myself included, often experience in real-life escape rooms when what’s supposed to be an hour-long experience becomes a sub-30-minute one. This may not be a depiction of a good escape room, but at least it’s a reasonable critique of a terrible one.
For more on escape rooms in TV, Portland escape room designer Laura Hall has a fantastic series of deep dives on particular episodes that feature escape rooms, both good and bad.
Taking a step back, there are also numerous videos and listicles on how to be a successful escape room player. The most widely viewed of these is a 2018 video by Mark Rober. I generally love Mark’s stuff, and this video shows a well-researched, albeit somewhat dated, representation of escape rooms. Most of his tips are still totally valid today, though the primary escape room he plays as an example leaves much to be desired, even by 2018 standards.
The big takeaway from this all is that the escape rooms you see portrayed on TV and in movies often aren’t representative of the amazing escape rooms that exist in 2022. If you’ve been holding off on playing escape rooms — or if you have a friend who has — because you’re worried that you’ll be locked in a small space, or that the puzzles will be too hard, or that it’ll be scary, there are countless options out there that are none of those things!
How do you find a good escape room near you? Check out Room Escape Artist’s regional recommendation guides for local highlights. I recently put together some new San Francisco and eastern Pennsylvania guides, and Sacramento and San Jose, CA guides are coming soon.
And if you have a favorite escape room appearance on TV or film, please tell me about it!
Happy puzzling!
Matthew // Enigmida
P.S. This newsletter may look a bit different than before, but don’t worry - it’s still me! I recently migrated platforms from Revue to Substack, and I’m playing around with the newsletter’s format a bit. Rather than multiple shorter blocks of content, I’m trying out more continuous writing. And I plan to post a bit more regularly, too! I’m also pausing my puzzle-per-issue for now… but that’ll be back soon in a slightly different format.
I think Christine, The Haunt Girl, was recently on a Disney show that featured a few southern California escape rooms. Hoping that showed some of the amazing games out there.
I like the new format. One message per email makes sense.