Escape Rooms: The HOLY GRAIL of PUZZLE DESIGN!

The designers of Escape Rooms face one of the greatest challenges in puzzle design: creating puzzles that are challenging enough for the pros, yet accessible enough for beginners. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail!
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Sources:
Craig Thompson - • Attempting Americas *H...
HigaTV - • RHPC does an Escape Room!
Brianna's World - • Family Hedge Maze Adve...
Ludodrome - • A Brief History of... ...
VYB - • We Took On The HARDEST...
OneWingedChris - • The Worst Escape Room ...
Kym Yvonne - • Storytime: WORST ESCAP...
Benjamaze Original - • The EASIEST way in the...
AimEscape - aimescape.com/
TERPECAs - topescaperoomsproject.com/
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THANK YOU to my subscribers! If you enjoyed this video or you'd like to get involved I'd love to hear from you.
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Music: Monsters by Dog
Copyright © Ben Roper 2020

[@vladimirkalugin-devstudio9721]

The holy grail of riddles is to make the puzzle easy, but make the player think it's hard. When the player solves such a riddle, he thinks that he is a genius) Hello colleagues, escape game creators)

[@Seektag]

Aha! Thanks for watching my vid friend!

[@MainStreetBusinessStrategies]

It’s a bit like doing a magic trick. The trick can be very simple, but surrounded by great patter and theatrics, do it seems very grand.

[@TimNorburn]

Love this Ben! I agree that Escape rooms need a better way to grading them, one of the great things is that a lot of rooms are reviewed on google etc, so you can tell which ones are good and well designed and which are badly designed. I hadn't made the connection to computer games before though, it was very interesting.

[@Seektag]

Thanks brother!

[@fmoonek]

I have worked in an escape room for about 3 years, and I couldn't agree more with the thumbnail and this video. I have so much resentment about escape rooms right now, that why I can still enjoy it while somebody invites me to go, I can't get myself to try and choose one myself by scrolling through all these sites. It's probably different from country to country, but where I worked, one site had a monopoly for being "the escape room site" with user reviews, ratings and rakings which made it even worse, because for example Top 30 rooms from my city all ranged between 10/10 max to 9.4/10 lowest. I've moved on from escape rooms, and I now stick to video games both recreationally and professionaly. A lot of awesome memories, a lot of bad memories, both as a client and as an employee. I feel like (I repeat atleast where I live) the industry is just a big (1,5k+ rooms at one point) missed oportunity, that got so rotten that it's I belive hard to recover from. I don't want to discourage anyone from going to escape rooms, but it really is a coin flip most of the time.

[@Seektag]

Really interesting to read that! Thank you for sharing - maybe the upcoming second evolution of Escape Rooms will yield some truly innovative experiences... If not then come join us with the Real World Games revolution! :0)

[@JuanUys]

What a well-produced video :-) I'm currently researching escape rooms, and found this. (For a video game we're making for uni.)

[@Seektag]

Good luck with your project! :0)

[@directtoanne]

hey thank you for this short but insightful view. even though it wasn't super in depth, it was concise and edited well and very enjoyable to watch! subbed! hope you have a great day!

[@jimmyryan5880]

I don't know where these bad escape rooms are. I've never experienced one with moon logic.

[@Seektag]

Good/bad is subjective - maybe the ones you've done were designed for brains like yours

[@ErrolElumir]

Ha ha, I recognize Rich Bragg's voice! ^_^ I would say that focusing on making a room challenging for an experienced player should be a lower priority for now. Making a well designed game is hard enough as it is. :)

[@Seektag]

You are wise! Thank you for doing what you do! :0)

[@VictoriaHarrison-qe3qw]

Great Video! Ok British Games Master (Escape room controller) here. I would be interested to hear folks suggestions & ideas. 🤩

[@MainStreetBusinessStrategies]

The problem is that classing "Escape Rooms" in a lump is like saying "board games". Some people love monopoly and hate scrabble, while others love both or hate both. If you are a linear thinker that loves sci-fi, and you play a non-linear comical game, you might hate it, even though others think it's fantastic.

[@Seektag]

I actually think there's way less variety in Escape Rooms than there is in board games, and also in both genres it's still possible for something to objectively suck. I appreciate your point though and you are certainly correct about the taste thing