Something like 99% of the escape rooms I’ve visited have used the standard one hour limit. It’s a nice round number, but does it really make the most sense? Some venues push the limits by offering 90 minute experiences, while others pull back and try to contain everything within 45. What difference does it really make?
20-30 minute experiences
A number of escape rooms offer 20-30 minute rooms to act as a low cost trial for customers. In the Chicago area, Just Escape (La Grange) and Escape Factor (Oak Park) each have one room like this, and Challenge Accepted (Bloomingdale) has a wide assortment which works well for maximizing room availability for last minute customers walking past.
There’s nothing wrong with short rooms like this. Often times these rooms are less elaborate than their lengthier counterparts but they can still have a few “Wow” moments. While experienced players may not want to go out of their ways to visit one of these shorter experiences, it’s still not a bad complement to try out while visiting to experience the featured attractions.
45 minute experiences
From an experience perspective, this length of room has on average given me the worst experiences. At best you’ve got a room with the depth of an hour long experience but without enough time to immerse in it fully, and at worst the room doesn’t have the same caliber of puzzles and theme as a longer experience. It usually costs in the same ballpark as a one hour room, as well, so it gives less bang for the buck.
For nonlinear escape rooms, the first few minutes are usually an exercise in exploration, getting a bearing for the environment. A good 45 minute room feels like an hour room in which the players need to skip this phase. Using hints early and often is one way to get around this, but having that time to think through our obstacles and test our hypotheses is literally what makes an escape room enjoyable.
60 minute experiences
A one hour limit has such a nice ring to it. While it’s a somewhat arbitrary limit to design an experience around, it’s a good middle ground for businesses to be able to serve a reasonable number of groups and still give groups plenty of time to work through their challenges on their own.
Overall, I’m surprised by how uncommon it is for an experienced team to finish a room in 15 minutes flat. Rooms have to be designed such that random first timers have a chance, and that’s difficult when experienced players can leap ahead by minutes at any given puzzle. Attentive game masters seem to be one of the keys for making an experience work for different skill levels, and most venues pull this off well.
90 minute experiences
Out of my 300+ escape rooms solved, only a few have been longer than an hour. Each of those experiences is among my favorites, and on March 2, I’ll be driving 6 hours to/from Minneapolis to try their 90 minute room before it closes permanently, Legend of Lyndale House at Trapped Puzzle Rooms.
From my conversations with owners, it doesn’t seem like anyone ever actually sets out to make a 90 minute room. Usually it seems to happen when there’s such an abundance of good content and it’s difficult to leave any of it on the cutting room floor. A 90 minute room is a sacrifice from a business, essentially a statement saying “if we cut out some content, we could get four more groups in per day, but we really want customers to experience this in it’s entirety.”
I’ve only participated in two 90 minute rooms in North America, and both were treats. Mind Over Matter’s Project Elise room was one of the first rooms of my 2018 travel challenge, and it was easily one of the most memorable due to its unique combination of video gaming and real life and its incredible amount of puzzles. Twisted Limits in McHenry delivered the most mind-blowing setting to explore in theirs, with enough content to have made multiple escape rooms if they had decided to go that route.
Summary
In general, the hour time limit works well for escape rooms. I tend to steer clear of 45 minute experiences unless I don’t have other options. Shorter snack-sized rooms have their place, and 90 minute rooms tend to be rare masterpieces almost by rule, because if a 90 minute experience is lacking, the owner has a major incentive to cut it down to an hour or less.
Leave a Reply