500 escape rooms- it’s sort of hard to believe. If each room averages one hour, that almost three weeks of my life spent playing escape rooms, 24×7. If I started solving escape rooms full time, nine to five, it would take me more than twelve weeks to hit this mark.
It’s funny thinking back to my first few rooms. I enjoyed the first room I played (2013), but it wasn’t until a year and a half later that I played my second room and really started pursuing these as a hobby. When I took a trip to Singapore mostly to play escape rooms, I had only solved about fifty- barely enough to call it a hobby!
It’s remarkable how much the escape rooms I’ve played have stuck with me, though. And it’s shocking how recent many of those in my first one hundred feel. I’m pretty sure I could draw out the exact layout of every single room I’ve ever played. There must be something memorable about solving puzzles nonstop for an hour.
I also find it amazing how unique escape rooms are. To this day, I still marvel at how little overlap there is between puzzles in different games. Sure, I can recognize the heck out of Morse Code, pigpen cipher, and every kind of lock out there, but the puzzles themselves are always unique enough to keep me guessing. Unless it’s the fifth time I’ve stumbled across the same copycat pirate-themed game I keep finding myself in.
So the big question is: what comes next? The short answer is that not too much will change. I’m going to continue to prioritize playing escape rooms in unique locales so I can stick pins in my map and fill out the places less traveled. After all, it’s about exploring the world, too. I have an exciting trip coming up, flying to Boise, Idaho for the first time, and exploring less populated parts of Nevada and Oregon.
The other thing I want to do more is create. I’ve got a big project I’ve been working on that’s nearly out of the gate, and I have a few other projects in the works. Can’t wait to carve out just enough time to get these across the finish line and share them with the world.
Until then, I’m happy to continue diving into escape rooms!
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