These tips should help you to be more efficient about how you play escape rooms and enable you to enjoy them more. Consider them as a handy set of guidelines rather than hard and fast rules, because every game is different, and varying circumstances may require a change of approach.
Spread OutWhen you enter a room as a group, is it is often a good idea to spread out, so you're your team can cover more territory at once. This only works, however, if you communicate.
CommunicateJust about every list of escape room tips tells you to communicate, and many escape room companies will offer the same advice to players before they begin a game. They are absolutely right. If you've found a key or a valuable clue, other people on the team need to know. They should also know if you solved a puzzle, what you used to do it, and what you obtained as a result. If you don't communicate this, it is very likely that they could waste time trying to solve something that was already done.
Spread Out AgainSpreading out isn't just for the start of the game. If you find yourself in a group of people clustered around a single note or puzzle, and the rest of the room is wide open for exploration, break free and explore away.
Identify Lock TypesLocks aren't as common in escape rooms as they once were, but if you play a lot of rooms, you're still likely to encounter them. When working with teams, I find it helpful to specify what kind of locks you have found. We like to distinguish between digit locks, which only have numbers, and character locks, which have alphabetical characters (and sometimes numbers as well). Like this: "Hey ya all, this chest has a 3-digit lock."
Search Everywhere (Within Reason)I once played an escape room where the owner, who also designed the games, insisted that searching was "essential" to all escape games. I didn't agree, but in this particular case, his philosophy was aggravated by the fact that, in his room, searching meant finding fortune cookie-sized pieces of paper hidden in obscure places and between the pages of many books. It was neither fun nor "essential."
Regardless of how you feel about searching, you will undoubtedly encounter it if you play a few rooms, and, if you are like most players, you will inevitably suffer from the dreaded “search fail.”
So look everywhere that is accessible without climbing on furniture or breaking something.
Feel under flat surfaces, by the way. You may find something attached with Velcro or a magnet.
If you open a safe or a drawer and find one thing, don't stop there. Check every nook and cranny of that safe. There may be more items.
Look on All Sides/Check the BackNow that you've searched everywhere and found everything, your work is not done. Examine everything you find from all possible angles. Find a piece of paper in a typewriter? Take it out and check the back. Is there a plaque leaning on a shelf that provides valuable information? Hmmn, I wonder if there might be more valuable information on the other side? Found a pocket watch in the pocket of a jacket? The time on the watch's face may be important, but I doubt it is as crucial as the inscription on the back. Did you just open a door to a room or to a safe? What's behind that door? Was there a loose picture hanging on the wall that the game master said was okay to take down? Gosh dangit, maybe the beautiful landscape isn't really what you need to be staring at. These, incidentally, are all things I forgot to do at some point in a game Please benefit from my experience.
Every Room is a New RoomMany escape rooms actually consist of multiple rooms. When you enter a new area, don't let your momentum make you treat it like you did the first one. Spread out. Search. Check all sides of everything you find.
Utilize Your TeamNot only is it okay for more than one person on your team to look at the same object, or search the same area, or try the same lock - it's recommended. One person can often catch or do what another person misses. When in doubt, tag team it.
Ask for HintsHere's one way to identify a rookie escape room player is that when you enter a room: he or she says, “Remember everybody, no hints!” If you had all the time in the world to solve a room, and you didn't have to worry about eating or sleeping, that would be fine. But typically, you only have an hour, and that time limit changes everything. If you spend an entire game fussing over one or two puzzles, you will probably not be having a good time. Even if you are, the people with you will not.
I once game mastered a room for a two people on a date, and the man was extremely insistent upon not getting hints. I am unlikely to forget the chastising that he received from his date on the way out to the car. It stung so much that even I took it to heart.
Another reason to ask for hints is that sometimes puzzles are jacked. You never know when you might encounter a puzzle that is unfair or that requires a leap of logic that an average mortal is unlikely to make. Or maybe you just need that search fail pointed out. No reason to feel bad about that.
My guideline for asking for hints is this: have I spent more than five minutes not getting anywhere at all, and I have stopped having fun? Or is it near the end of the game, and will not asking for a hint prevent me from completing the game? Then it's hint time, baby! Hint me up.
Not Everything is a Puzzle or a ClueOne of the most valuable skills that you will learn as you play more escape rooms is the ability to recognize the difference between what is a clue and what isn't, as well as what is a puzzle and what isn't.
While just about everything in a game could be a clue, not everything is. I've frequently heard players say something along the lines of "This has to mean something. It wouldn't be here if it didn't mean something." But it really doesn't, and that's because escape rooms contain such things as set decorations, red herrings, and ghost puzzles.
In 2015, I was talking to an owner who always left a vacuum in one of his rooms so he could clean up while resetting. Few would argue that this does not lend itself toward an especially polished looking room, but regardless, that's what he did. During a game, one player decided to try and disassemble the vacuum cleaner. The game master did not discourage it. (Bad game master! Bad!) The point is: the vacuum cleaner was neither a clue nor a puzzle.
Some Things Won't Make Sense until LaterIf you find one piece of a jigsaw puzzle in an escape room, it's pretty obvious that you need to find the other pieces of the puzzle before you can complete it. There are regularly other items in escape rooms for which the same is true, but not as obvious. You may not yet have enough information or all the pieces you need to figure out the purpose of one particular item. So if you feel like you have spent a reasonable amount of time staring at something and it still doesn't make sense, and there are still other things left to do, try those things.
Read it YourselfWhen people find written clues, the tendency is often to read it out loud. If the clue is of any length, I suggest that you pass it around and have people read it to themselves. This way, everyone doesn't have to stop all at once to listen to a single player, which creates a bottleneck. In my experience, comprehension also goes up when people read to themselves as opposed to hearing something read to them. In addition, the clue may contain clues within itself that can only be detected by looking at the clue. Such clues within clues include cases of capitalization, misspelling, or sequences of letters at the beginning of sentences.
Enter Solutions as You Find ThemIf you have figured out how a puzzle works, and all that remains is to go through the steps and get a sequence of digits or characters, have someone man the lock or the device that those go with. They can then enter the sequence as you call it out. This technique can shave a few valuable seconds off your game.
Stay on TrackIn everyday life, one of the most common errors that people make in their thinking is that they don't follow thoughts through to their conclusions. A person may be headed straight towards a valuable insight and then suddenly veer aside and miss it entirely. Sometimes this is avoidance. Other times, it's just a mistake. Manipulative people like politicians and small children use our tendency to do this as a way to avoid dealing with things they don't want to talk about. They simply divert the conversation in another direction.
It can hurt you in life, and it can hurt you in an escape room. Game masters see it over and over again. People are just about to solve a problem when they get distracted and thereby fail to solve a puzzle. Second guessing yourself is a form of this; it just you that is derailing yourself.
The solution is to exhaust your initial idea before moving on to others (provided you felt it was a good idea in the first place), and also to hold fast when others are trying to steer you in another direction. Believe in yourself.
Don't Overthink ItThe average escape room has roughly fifteen puzzles. That means you need to solve one puzzle every four minutes in order to escape in an hour. As a result, escape room puzzles are generally not very difficult. Of course, there are exceptions, and this is all relative to what you think is difficult. Regardless, overthinking puzzles is an all too common mistake made more frequently by newbies, but not always avoided by experienced players.
Step BackWhen you are stuck, it can be helpful, both literally and figuratively, to take a step back. Shift your mental perspective and think about how a puzzle might fit within the overall context of the room. Or, literally, step away from the puzzle. You may see that those blurry images form numbers, or that the shadows from certain objects are more important than the objects themselves, or that when viewed from a distance, overlapping objects may take the shape of a word.
Revisit What You've Done BeforeAnother tip when you are stuck is to go back and review what you've done before. See if you've missed anything or skipped any steps. Also, consider the very last thing you did. In linear games, one thing leads to another with few deviations, so the last thing you discovered is probably what you need to focus on.
In a well-designed escape room, you're actions will trigger a noticeable response. If that response doesn't happen right it front of you, it may come to your attention because it is accompanied by a loud noise or a visual cue. But what if the room you are playing isn't like that, and you just did something that didn't seem to render a result? Look around to see if something changed. Maybe a door or a drawer popped open somewhere.
Beware of Skipping AheadIf you find a lock wide open, and it was clearly overlooked when they reset the room, my recommendation is to lock it and solve it. Why? Because when you skip puzzles, either accidentally or intentionally, it is confusing as hell. The flow of the game is disrupted. Puzzles that didn't get solved, and that are no longer useful, immediately become red herrings. When you think you may have accidentally skipped a puzzle, it might be a good time to consult with your game master.
That's it! Hope you find this helpful.