"Matthew Stein wrote a lot of words that you will want to read."
Highlights from my recent publications on Room Escape Artist 🔑
REA editor-in-chief Lisa Spira opened yesterday’s June 2025 monthly wrap-up with:
Room Escape Artist’s June headline: Matthew Stein wrote a lot of words that you will want to read. He wrote about some impressive European games, and he wrote a number of thought pieces about experience design.
Indeed, I’ve been quite busy. 1/3 of the pieces published on REA the past month were mine, including reviews of standout escape rooms from a Netherlands and Belgium trip earlier this year, as well as the first batch of some longer-form thought pieces on escape room and immersive design (with more to come over the next few months!) It’s been a proper spring cleaning of my writing backlog; for the first time in years, I was able to fully close out my writing to-do list, creating space for a new cohort of projects and ideas.
But the words I’m writing here in this newsletter are probably not those which you’re most interested in reading, so let’s get straight to the good stuff.
Commentary
One of the benefits of playing 700+ escape rooms all around the world is the ability to pick up on some interesting trends, both within regional markets and globally. I love collecting and connecting the dots, and that often leads to fun article ideas.
A Case for Smaller Sets and Deeper Worlds - Even after playing some of the largest, flashiest escape rooms in the world, many of my favorite experiences remain those which concoct deeper, more layered worlds in smaller spaces. This article explores the many forms in which a small footprint can be a feature.
A Picture-Perfect Guide to Escape Room Team Photos – Team photos are one of the greatest marketing moments, yet also one of the biggest missed opportunities for most escape rooms. For both creators and players, this article shares some tips to help you level up your escape room team photo game.
Keeping Score: Original Soundtracks in Escape Rooms – Sound design is an important and often overlooked element of escape room design. In this article, I examine all the layers to interactive sound design, and also share a list of escape rooms that have publicly released their soundtracks.
Playtest Your Story – You playtest your puzzles, but do you playtest your story? Observe players during the experience, ask them questions afterwards, and iterate to close the gap between what they experienced and what you intended.
Reviews
Even while shifting my focus more toward macro-level trends, I still love critically examining individual escape rooms, and many of the following reviews serve as invaluable stars in the constellations that form the above commentary pieces.
The Chimera Corp Saga, Escape Artist Greenville (Greenville, SC, USA) – Fellow REA writer Cindi S. had already covered the 3 individual games at Escape Artist’s Hampton Station location — Castle Flüffendor, Dark Lullaby, and Help Wanted — and in this piece, I look at how these 3 episodes come together into something much greater than the sum of its parts as a single interconnected experience.
Pray, Escape Room Katwijk (Katwijk, Netherlands) – Pray excelled in vibes. We were repeatedly left speechless as we navigated a creepy yet absurd world, full of unexpected twists and turns.
Lost and Found and The Concierge, Hotel Veloria (Volkel, Netherlands) – All 3 experiences at Hotel Veloria contained some of the most satisfying puzzles and compelling narratives that I’ve encountered. They’re building a special world.
Zoltar Speaks, Escape Cafe (Hilversum, Netherlands) – Zoltar Speaks whisked us to an exquisite 15th-century Middle Eastern market. This escape room was a standout amongst standouts.
Le Prince, Escaping Belgium (Retie, Belgium) – Le Prince was a detailed escape room themed around around a real historical figure: the “Father of Cinematography.”
The Reading Witch, Deadlocked Escape Rooms (Reading, England) – With their horror game, The Reading Witch, Deadlocked channeled their creativity and charm while also leveling up their production quality.
Make sure to follow along on Room Escape Artist to see more of my writing as it publishes, and on my Patreon to get a peek behind the scenes as I’m writing and researching a book about North American letterboxing and treasure hunting.
Happy puzzling!
Matthew