Planning Your Escape

Book excerpt: Never get stuck inside an escape room again, with this strategy guidebook to beating your favorite immersive interactive game—from a well-known game designer and puzzle enthusiast Chances are you have visited an escape room, whether for a birthday party, a corporate team-building exercise, or as a weekend excursion with your friends. But what does it take to maximize your chances of solving the puzzles, while ensuring everyone has a good time along the way? Planning Your Escape is the perfect guide to making sure you never get stuck in another escape room again. Game designer extraordinaire Laura Hall has all the best strategies for every room you might encounter, so your team can function like a well-oiled machine. This guide offers: -A history of puzzles and experiential entertainment, from the 4,000-year-old dexterity puzzles of Mohenjo-daro to the spectacle of immersive theater installations like Secret Cinema, Meow Wolf, and Sleep No More; -Different types of escape rooms, and solvable examples of the common puzzles they employ; -Common escape room player personality types, and how best to work with them; and -Advice for constructing your own escape rooms and puzzle hunts Bringing in a cast of experts, Planning Your Escape is the must-have strategy book for any escape room enthusiast, puzzle fan, and aspiring experience designer. Get ready to wow your friends and impress your co-workers with your new skills, and never enter a room you can’t get out of again!