Behind-the-scenes at a World Class Escape Room

Join us as we sneak behind-the-scenes at an award-winning Escape Room and find out what goes into designing the perfect puzzle box.
Support us on Patreon (and access the full 70-minute playthrough): / peoplemakegames
Thanks so much to Brighton-based Pier Pressure for letting us pick apart their Loot the Lanes room. They've got a bunch more: pierpressure.co.uk/

[@jamesliley2760]

The best 'escape room' I've done was outdoors. It took place across a park where my group has to diffuse a bomb. We had to use walkie talkies and gps systems to find lock boxes and finished by cutting a wire to diffuse a bomb with 1 second left

[@unfortunatewitnessX]

Whoa! I always thought that escape rooms are actually rooms inside buildings, but that experience must take the cake 🎂!

[@qrisquinn]

plot twist: the police just needed free "volunteers" to diffuse a bomb xd

[@sockcloset9405]

Omg, that sounds like a great escape room! I'm not super big on escape rooms myself, but my mom would be thrilled! Do you by chance remember what it was called?

[@CrabQueen]

when you started with it being outdoors at a park, I thought you were just going to say you got lost in a hedge maze and had a great time

[@ieatatsonic]

Escape rooms are such an interesting part of game design. It's neat to see how they've evolved from point-and-click roots.

[@kimjongun5172]

Escape rooms were around before video game’s.

[@FinetalPies]

@@kimjongun5172 Were they?

[@kimjongun5172]

@@FinetalPies yeah

[@rizkyanandita8227]

@@kimjongun5172 is it called "prison"?

[@revolvency]

@@rizkyanandita8227 There's Russian version called Gulag, it's a best seller, although not many people finish the game. There's also Indonesian version called Pulau Buru, and Nusakambangan

[@CreatrixTiara]

My favourite escape room moment was actually my first one, at Escape the Room in San Francisco. It was time travel themed, with two rooms representing the same space on two different days. Our literal introduction to the room (a science lab) is interrupted by a lab assistant breaking a clock accidentally. When we got to the Yesterday room, the lab assistant is there cleaning. I went up to the lab assistant to warn them not to break the clock - there wasn't really anything *overt* saying you had to do that, I just thought I'd try and see what happens. We moved back to the Today room and the clock was back with a clue!

[@vladimir_ckau]

This is brilliant!

[@StreamHGF]

This sounds like fun!

[@HeySoldierA]

Escape from the Time Travel Lab made by SCRAP! They're one of the OG comapnies in escape rooms. I belive they had 2 locations in SF for a while. I worked in the SJ location (which is no longer operating) and actually ran this very room! It was definiltly unique and tons of fun.

[@yorkoh5880]

I find it interesting that Quinns' reaction to a giant drill is "Holy Kittens!" Brilliant.

[@Quinns_Quest]

It would be bad karma if I didn't admit that I got that from Greg Proops, who is the /real/ holy kitten.

[@lettuceprime4922]

@@Quinns_Quest - I mean, i see the resemblance

[@mattball8622]

Seeing how a great escape room is made has reinforced my belief that the two escape rooms I've done before were terrible, haha. No host, linear puzzles that meant you couldn't split the party and paper-thin themes. This video definitely made me want to give them another chance so I can try and find a good one!

[@aturchomicz821]

Well sure, thats your side of current entertainment history filled with outdoor activities and _human interaction_ 🤢. As an Un-Proffesional programmer Ill gladly stay inside in my VR Headset and see the rise of something much greater then this bollocks lol

[@brennanruiz1803]

11:03 "Our ultimate goal would be a team finishing without 30 seconds to spare." _thinks back to the first escape room I did, where we opened the final door right as the host was about to open it from the other side, hand on the handle even_ Yeah, that checks out.

[@nathandts3401]

I appreciate you, KZbin Stephen Merchant. You may not get to do the sport stuff, but you're still killing it. Bratters did well with the hiring process.

[@Vailskibum]

I've only done 1 escape room, but now I have a sudden urge to do another...

[@bluepenguin4345]

Right? Same here. I’ve only done one escape room, but I’ve always wanted to do more, and hopefully I will at some point!

[@unfortunatewitnessX]

Wow! I didn't know you responded here. But I wish I could try an escape room.

[@michaela.754]

Get out, checkmark

[@tom-ks]

Wait what? Vailskibum, here? WHAT?!?!

[@EagleKai]

"Our ultimate goal would be a team finishing with 30 seconds to spare" Had that exact thing happen last time I ran an escape room. Had 33 seconds left on the clock when we finished.

[@hdade5280]

We managed to escape once with 4 seconds on the clock! Not sure if the hosts were just being kind to us and paused the clock, but it was so much fun!

[@johncounts2182]

I wonder if any of them have experimented with a variable dial on the progression of the clock, making it go faster or slower (the one visible to the customer, independent of the score timer) within a range of what is reasonably perceivable, to elicit more suspense...

[@KilRBass]

@@johncounts2182 That would be wild but I don’t think that would be worth the effort - maybe stopping the clock a bit to give about an extra minute would be easier. One other thing that definitely exist in some escape rooms are split puzzles meaning there is sometime more than one way to open a lock or a door. This allows the moderators to practically skip one or two puzzles for groups that where stuck at a point. This way every group at least gets the feeling of “we were so close” and not “wow i don’t think we even saw half the room“

[@doneinnj]

I have been trapped in this escape room called lockdown since last year

[@infiniti2011]

Oh same! 10/10 would do it again.

[@fitandhappy42]

As someone who helped build three of the puzzles for Loot The Lanes this was an excellent watch, I’ll have to go and cough up some money for that Patreon video I guess. :) (...even as someone who built part of it, I still struggled when I had my turn to actually play the room, you’d think having seen the thing being built from wood frames onwards would give an advantage but, surprisingly not!)

[@aaronpoole5531]

This time last year when things were yknow, not like this... Two of my long time friends from college did an escape room together. It was Jumanji theme and our host heard me saying I'd never seen jumanji and he used that to joke with us when we were in the room. We solved it with something stupid like 10 seconds left and we were all screaming, it was great. I'd love to do this one!

[@lastwolf42]

I was in a class in college that built an escape room and in the week we ran it we had a chat where people monitoring the game (we all took turns based off class schedule) that would update the rest of us with funny things people playing would say or stupid things people would do or what puzzle people were stuck on. I loved that class and that chat was one of the most memorable part to me. Watching people fail can be frustrating but sharing it with everyone who worked on it was genuinely hilarious.

[@coledalton890]

I’ve worked for an escape room company for several years. You see crazy shit. I feel the hosts pain

[@atfruitbat]

It's interesting to see how well these expriences can be engineered for players, and the different roles involved in that. Being a host must be like constantly resisting the urge to backseat drive the puzzle solvers, while also trying to prevent them from breaking all the things! Clearly there's a lot of improv to do as well. Looking forward to the whole Escape Room experience video via Patreon.

[@shtrguy]

As an escape room owner who designs his own games, this is the best video I've seen on how it's done well. For me personally, I would rank flow above immersion even though immersion is important. I've played plenty of very cool looking, very immersive games that had garbage flow and we failed because we could never figure out "what comes next." When I'm tweaking one of the games I've designed and built, it's usually flow that I'm fixing and not immersion. In fact, this video convinced me that I need to do just that to one of our most popular games where the flow has always been problematic.

[@NaiveDJack]

PEOPLE MAKE CRIME 73:03 LMAO

[@chairwood]

y does the timestamp not work :((

[@monkeygamingify]

@@chairwood it’s not an actual time stamp it’s “how” long they took to complete the escape room

[@MozilloGames]

I've yet to go do an escape room, but my friends and I did a treasure hunt through London, via Hidden City, and it elicited the same thrills explained through her, but all while cleverly drawing you through parts of London and through museums. Good stuff.

[@Minihood31770]

I've always been enamoured by the idea of escape rooms. You need friends, money, and an escape room to go to. Alas, all three of these never quite lined up for me.

[@stm7810]

Mood!

[@ellensunden2778]

In my area, there's a very kind Escape Room owner that allows people to play solo. I've played each and every one of his escape rooms as a solo player, and really LOVED the extra challenge! The place is called Mission: Breakout in Lafayette, IN

[@vixtravels]

I used to be a travel agent but recently got a job as a "Games Master" for a madly popular local Escape Room(s) & it is the most awesome job I have ever done!

[@fibreglassmonkey]

The best escape room I've done was Coven at the The Void in Romania. As we were playing, it played animal noises, and we all thought it was for atmosphere, but it turned out that the noises for different animals were triggered by us moving in different places, so when we were presented with a sequence of animals, we had the lightbulb moment and realised it had been us the whole time. Solving the sequence required multiple people and you had to plan the route because someone had to walk through a door and away from other animal triggers.

[@joseybryant7577]

Always come to this channel, when I'm feeling anxious. I always leave it feeling much better.

[@GourmetBurrito]

Immersion and game feel is so important. An escape room can have the most clever puzzles but without a good theme or stripped of that sense of discorvery/adventure, it kind of falls flat. I remember this one escape room that was time travel themed and it turned out that our actions had altered in the past had altered the story. And everyone in the room looked at each other at the same time as we all came to that realization both in absolute shock and joy.

[@williamrose3413]

There was one escape room I did where the final section was where you have to get everyone together to sacrifice one of your team in like a mayan temple sort of thing which was just so funny as a way of getting everyone to group up. I think a lot of what I remember about the escape rooms I've done is the big set pieces, the mayan temple room I've mentioned, the room where they had somehow got a jeep into it, an animatronic T-rex jumpscare etc. Edit: Remembered another great escape room piece, have two massive 'anti-radiation' suits you can't see out of but they do have cameras on them and walkie talkes to the rest of your group who can see the camera feeds to instruct you

[@thaliatea]

is the jeep and t-rex extinct at houdinis southampton by any chance?

[@KaritKtana]

Can we just spare a thought for the wonderful pun game of Pier Pressure?

[@ARKumalarkey]

You guys put out some of the best and most unique content and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

[@LolaliciousSmiley]

I used to play these every day in computer class! I would love to be able to try one in real life.

[@notmadeofpeople4935]

The real friends were the escape rooms we made along the way.

[@douglasparkinson4123]

did a great room the other day. the escape room company we were at were known for only normally having two differnt room segments within their rooms. but in this one right, in the second room, there was a medical box, and when you opened it was a door handle to a previously completely invisible door.

[@bd648]

This channel does essentially the best work out there on games period

[@half-faust]

The last escape room I did was pretty unsatisfying. Watching this video makes me realize some of the things they did wrong

[@jdmhexagon2584]

Escape rooms are exactly my jam but I've only done one, just never got a regular group together. Post-pandemic I am going to absolutely drown myself in them

[@carsena1318]

great video!! love the analysis

[@hollyzijderveld]

played this escape room a couple of weeks ago, it was amazing!! i'd definitely reccomend it

[@SpySappingMyKeyboard]

I had never considered that running an escape room means watching people fail it constantly. My respect for hosts just went way up, and also my vague plans of ever making an escape room have been dashed.

[@Yosiakm]

I love this video. Thank you for exploring the topic of escape rooms!

[@markpowell7395]

I'd love to try some of the Pier Pressure games, but I loved both the Bewilderbox rooms, also in Brighton.

[@j.r.7339]

I just love this channel. Almost every single Video is super interesting. You deserve more Views (compared to _other channels_

[@ts4gv]

this is a huge leap above the ones i’ve played. i’m so glad there’s designers out there who actually care about immersion

[@Draconicrose]

I've never had the urge to play an escape room. Until now.

[@fimekdo]

Splendid episode! Cheers!

[@metrotorful]

Fantastic video! Always love me some People make Games chill nights

[@Sacculent]

I remember we went to a hobbit escape room once, 4 rooms, each completely different and interesting, the last one ending with less than a minute to spare. It was incredible

[@AngryWildMango]

I LOVE escape rooms. can;t wait to go back. super great to do when visiting family.

[@EmperorKabir]

My friends and I just broke the record for this room. I suspect it won't stand long though! Great room and really good staff at Pier Pressure.

[@notimportant768]

darn, even if I'm not casting spells id love to go through an artificers workshop, a fantasy heist or escape from a dungeon of some kind. magic being unpopular probably discourages that kind of fantasy.

[@mrcraggle]

On Baker Street there's an old Emporium there that's absolutely massive. Unfortunately, it's been sitting mostly empty for years only for little toot shops to occupy its space periodically. For the last few years (and the growing popularity of Escape Rooms) that a Sherlock themed Escape Room right there would be amazing. There does exist a Sherlock escape room called Sherlock: The Official Live Game but that appears to be based on the Benedict Cumberbatch TV series as opposed to the property.

[@georgemustard1057]

Me and some friends did a Sherlock Holmes themed escape room just last weekend! It’s in Colchester in the UK and it’s based on the aesthetic of the original stories from a century ago

[@Zades145]

this is one of those videos the algorithim swallowed up and hid from me, but i'm finally watching it now. great work as always quinns.

[@ThePrimordialChronicles]

Why haven’t I found this channel earlier? Brilliant stuff!

[@littlered6340]

It's very cool that escape rooms are physical now. I did a weekly newspaper column about them back in the day when they were all video games. I loved them a lot. Because the physical ones are multiplayer, I haven't done as many (only two 😭) but I liked them a lot.

[@antoinehinge1846]

Hey, while you're exploring puzzles. Any chance of getting a deep dive on crosswords in the UK? I'm very curious about the life of setters of the Listener or the Magpie. I feel like they are bubbling in our collective consciousness with people now starting to stream them on twitch? Anyway, thanks for the great video and insights!

[@Quinns_Quest]

That's a great idea. I'll add it to my increasingly scatty "Ideas" document (which is quickly turning into the note-taking equivalent of a plate of spaghetti).

[@jdmhexagon2584]

I second this! Antoine, can you recommend any crossword Twitch channels? I did a Saturday Guardian on Facebook live a few years ago, as an experiment. My camera was in the wrong orientation the whole time. Great success

[@antoinehinge1846]

@@jdmhexagon2584 Yes! On twitch foggybrume does magpie & listeners on monday & friday (my favorite). Quizzy dan does monday variety on the evening. Fizzix plays scrabble/does cryptics as well. A last one I like is brain mage wxho does daily guardian cryptics in the afternoon everyday! There is a dedicated category on twitch for crosswords you can explore (or use!) but there are also american style solvers and i dont knowx if its your style??

[@jdmhexagon2584]

@@antoinehinge1846 Excellent, thanks! I've dipped my toe into the NYT crossword a bit and I enjoy how different it is. But that's a fine list to be getting on with!

[@win5128]

The host kinda reminds me of "backseat gaming" when you watch streamers play a game you've already played haha!

[@PeopleMakeGames]

We were partly inspired by IGN's series where they have game devs react to people speedrunning their games. Not that you can necessarily call our playthrough of this room a... 'speedrun'. -Chris

[@underdog353777]

That "last 30 seconds" spoke to me, I did one in NYC that featured a "haunted manor" aesthetic. The last puzzle something like two dozen keys drop, and you think it *HAS* to be the door key. There's a bit of a trick to it, the keys are an obvious red herring, but the point is that there was less than a minute - I was like "quick everyone grab some and start trying them!" I found the right answer, and in my excitement to rush to the door and push people aside I put the key in the lock and the host - who we hadn't seen until this point - pulls open the door (away from me) and I think I had a genuine fight or flight moment as this suddenly new person appears in front of my who aggressively opened the door and scared the piss out of me. I was in such a state of shock I nearly got violent - it left me quickly, but that feeling didn't. We had ten seconds to spare. Greatest excitement I've had in ages.

[@unicornconservationco]

Their host looks delightful!

[@TPoynt100]

I actually work at an escape room, and one of the rooms we have starts off with one of the players getting locked in a cage. It's always a funny moment because I tell them that they're going to be given secret information, and then I slam the door shut on them. It's great.

[@1812madjack]

If Pier Pressure need to expand, then Churchill Square is about to have a lot of floor space going cheap...

[@flikkie72]

Every escape room I've ever done was amazing - but maybe that's just because my friends are very funny and they deliver entertainment, even if it's a dull room?

[@Floflox]

That was so interesting

[@NeonNijahn]

An added immersion element would be just to give people ear pieces that the host can talk into instead of a speaker in the room which breaks immersion.

[@j.r.7339]

"People like feeling good about themselves." Thanks for telling me

[@cobalt2672]

Did they cover what happens when players *fail* at escape rooms at all - and managing that experience?

[@j.r.7339]

Now I want to both visit and design/work at an Escape Room.

[@borisb56]

I'll use this video to design better levels for Escape Simulator. Thanks guys!

[@Samop002]

I'm laughing too much at "holy kittens!"

[@MattTheSpratt]

god, y'all look like giants to me, doing a escape room during pandemic year when I can scarcely go out to shop but for once every couple of weeks at the least

[@glitchwolf1384]

I did a single escape room... it pretty much became everyone else doing the escape room while I desperately looked for ways to be helpful because everyone would just ignore me or if I found a clue they'd take it and work it out with everyone else instead of me... the plus side though was that at the end we had to open a lockbox, and for some reason, when we discovered it, around 3/4ths of the way through, someone tried spinning the wheels randomly to try to find the code by sheer luck, and they accidentally somehow managed to overwrite the old code, so when we got the actual code for the lockbox, it didn't work, and someone had to sit there trying every option on this 4 digit lockbox one at a time. Eventually it got unlocked and they reset it properly but that's... the one upside to my escape room experience. Yeah definitely not good for someone who's almost always locked out of physical events just due to not being, y'know... heard

[@user-ju6vo2rk7d]

Who else is eagerly looking behind Quinns to see what changed in his collection? I see The Search for Planet X (Of course), but it's on Knizia shelf. It seems he took out Taj Mahal for the sake of it? Up in the top of the shelf, there's Rococo Deluxe (as was shown in his review) and City of Big Shoulders, but I see no Inis! I thought the top was supposed to be a beauty pageant? On the Euro axis, Hallertau has made it next to other Uwes, but did he took out Castles of Burgundy for it? Finally, I see Furnace and M'44 expansions on the 'to try out' pile. Edit: And what's Concordia Venus doing down there? I thought you hated that expansion.

[@Quinns_Quest]

Good spot! I use the box of Concordia Venus to keep all of the expansion boards in. ;)

[@rashkavar]

I really want to try one of these at some point. I'm really fond of the video game genre that does this: Myst, The Room, stuff like that. Would love to know how my skills in that sort of environment transfer to real life. Trick is finding 3 other people who are interested.

[@choliosis2551]

I've done one really good escape room and one really bad one and the difference was night and day. The bad one was pirate themed but it was really just a few pirate decorations in a basement. The host seemed pretty disinterested and my friends and I were just yelling at each other through each puzzle. The good one was kidnapping themed and it started with us (magnetically) handcuffed to a table and in the dark with a black light flashlight that revealed clues on all the walls. The host felt like a dm taking part in the journey and joking with us. There were like 3 tasks going on at once, perfect for the group of 6 I had. Yeah. It is pretty significant when they go the extra mile.

[@bacchic6676]

love the buzz cut chris

[@johnyendrey5590]

I don't know what it is, maybe I'm hard-coded to apply Occam's razor, but when presenting with an escape room, my first instinct is to start breaking things. Its usually an effective method against plaster and wood, and its an excellent way to vent one's frustration at riddles. I uh... I don't to go many escape rooms anymore.

[@icklesquish89]

wow this was so interesting :)

[@KingKafei]

It's interesting the least favorite are ones based around magic because I'd be the most interested in doing a room themed around magic like a witches hut or a sorcerer's study and such.

[@Teka007]

Escape rooms are cool, but how about an "escape building"? 🤔 It sounds hardcore, but could be fun if it's done right.

[@sirprintalot]

I did an escape room in Burnham-on-Sea in the UK, and it was cool because it had a secondary objective - and we got the second highest possible score.

[@TroelsRohde]

Been doing this for 7 years (building and maintaining rooms) yes, its very frustrating

[@michael8143]

Nice Oliver Bonas mug Quinns ;p

[@junkmail2223]

Since we're talking puzzles, any chance of doing something about the yearly MIT Mystery Hunt?

[@thewave5536]

Epic

[@chesthoIe]

I want to make a haunted house/escape room/new thing where the participants are given guns and some sort of laser tag system is attached to squibs that the actors have that explode when hit. It'd be an IRL first person shooter.

[@ChewyThomson]

The best escape room I ever did was the Great Covid Quarantine Apartment Escape of 2021.

[@barrymchugh667]

Is that host one of the actors from Charlie Brookers Screen wipe? Hard to say with the mask on 😅

[@kap79]

I miss escape rooms so much.

[@letters_from_paradise]

I would love for someone with enough money to create an escape room based on the clockwork puzzlings of "The Room"

[@Damariobros]

To think escape rooms all started with a little flash game called Escape the Bathroom

[@Ennahdee]

Wait, that's NOT Simon Miller?

[@Techischannel]

Escape rooms are hard, and hard to make. Apariently also hard to enter since corona and all. So all i ever did was play an escape room board game and ... well ... that day i learnt that the brightest bulbs in the room, were our LED's giving us light.

[@precumming]

Also don't suddenly have a loud siren. The only escape room I've done required going down a narrow passage with lasers and breaking a laser set off an extremely loud siren right in my face, I'm very sensitive to loud sounds and there was nothing which said it might happen. There was also a puzzle involving a radio with really loud static and the volume knob went from 100% to like 75% to off and we were lead to believe that the radio was a key and it had push buttons which wanted a code and having played Oxenfree I just muted it and fiddled around with different combinations and I did type in the correct one and nothing happened, only after I unmuted I was then told a code - our host didn't help us out at all despite being stuck multiple times.

[@LucyKosaki]

I always wanted to do one of these but then I remembered that I am awkward with strangers and I don't have friends to go with

[@Holobrine]

Hold up...escape rooms are escapism 🤯 Also just realized the host is a lot like a DnD dungeon master

[@martinteece8983]

Quinn u got checkout a cool puzzel desk builder he done a new wizard one with a labarainth game on top

[@megazenn22]

its 2021, can we do 60 yet?

[@j.r.7339]

I have never escaped a Room without kinda cheating. (Climbing through Bars in a "Prison."

[@gachasaver5846]

all right i'm convinced that the escape room i did before was just very bad XD

[@donaldfrankcheadlejr.1244]

The real escape room is trying to escape the rent hikes in every neighbourhood one of these fuckers pops up in

[@j.r.7339]

Is there a Submarine Escape Room. Lol

[@ukiyomelbourne4396]

"The more plausible you make your escape room, the more people dig it." Welp.

[@eliseerickson5994]

I did a horrendous, Ancient Egyptian themed "Escape Room" a couple year ago. Puzzles had to be done in a very specific order, but they were accessible at any point in the game. Host was a poor actress. Puzzles were so easy a small child could solve them.

[@eldestisland4520]

Why did you guys change the thumbnail and title?

[@PeopleMakeGames]

Fewer people than usual were clicking on the video! -Chris

[@eldestisland4520]

@@PeopleMakeGames That's a shame. This was a great video!

[@PrecariousPosition]

I went to an escape room in Toronto and it was awful. Half the things were broken so we couldn't progress. A tiny room that we had to fit 6 people in and a tiny hole that you had to crawl through that members of our party couldn't fit through. The lady that was in control seemed to do nothing while we did the same thing over thinking we got it wrong. Then we ran out of time and the lady just seemed like she didn't care. Might have ruined escape rooms for me