As someone who keeps track of how many escape rooms I’ve done, I’ve got a predicament of what counts toward that total.
Not every room fits the “one hour in a locked room” formula. At the end of the day the exact tally isn’t terribly important, except for tracking milestone rooms (it’s fun to celebrate room #100, room #200, etc. with a little extra festivity). So as a result, I’ve got some personal preferences around what I count and what I don’t.
60+ minutes in a locked room. It counts. Duh.
Escape room movies. Doesn’t count. Double duh. Sorry to Cube, Saw, Escape Room, etc.
Short escape room experiences (5 – 59 minutes). It counts. A number of businesses use these to introduce customers to the concept of escape rooms. Many of them show remarkable care and attention and are worthwhile experiences in their own right.
Escape room home games. Doesn’t count. While it can be fun to carve out an hour at home to work on a themed puzzle challenge, it’s not really an escape room.
Timed puzzle events. It counts. This category includes Scrap’s “escape room” events and any other timed puzzle challenges which traditionally feature many teams competing simultaneously.
Scavenger hunts. Maybe counts. Ultimately this depends on how puzzles are integrated into the event and if the event is monitored with a strict win/lose time-based deadline.
Professionally-curated VR experiences. It counts. Going to an escape room and putting on the VR headset is more akin to attending a non-VR escape room than it is to playing a home video game.
Home video games. Doesn’t count. As much as I love puzzle games, and as much as I appreciate that escape rooms started in this medium, it’s fundamentally different. If we get to the day where we get remotely monitored VR experiences in the home, this line might blend, but for now the distinction is clear.
I’ve got a few other one-off cases that don’t fit into any of these categories. My rule of thumb for how to track those is to count it if there’s a third party host (usually a business) who manages a puzzle-driven scenario with a fixed deadline. So I wouldn’t count the puzzle game Maniac Mansion toward my total, but if I went to an escape room and the challenge was to sit down and clear Maniac Mansion in an hour, I would count it.
Other places like Boda Borg cause problems for tracking due to the high number of rooms but short length and lack of game master monitoring. It’s close but I’d leave these off my list, or perhaps count the entire experience as one room.
Murder mystery dinners, while I love them, are off my list due to the lack of a fixed time constraint and lack of specific puzzles. Though I wouldn’t mind starting to track those separately- they’re also a blast and great for puzzle lovers.
Agree / disagree? Let me know!
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