Top 5 Tips & Tricks to Succeed at Escape Room Games

About to take on the challenge of an Escape Room game? Looking for some advantageous hints to help you prepare to be the best you can be? This list has been compiled by the Escapologic^® resident expert (who has played >950 rooms with a 99.5% success rate!) to provide the top 5 escape room tips and tricks that will equip you with the knowledge and skills required to help you succeed!

Fresh Eyes

If you’ve been staring at a puzzle for too long and have reached the point where your mind has gone blank trying to figure out the solution, tag in a team member to help. A fresh set of eyes can be just what you need to come up with other potential options or solutions. Sometimes this fresh set of eyes can be your own – go and concentrate on another puzzle or challenge or simply do another search of the room and return later, sometimes the solution will become immediately apparent!

Communicate

Communication is threefold:

• 1) Communicate everything you find. The most successful teams call out the types of locks and items they discover so that everyone is aware when someone has found a key, a piece of code, or knows what kind of information they may be looking for.
• 2) Listening is a big part of communication. This includes listening to teammates so you know what they’ve found/when they need help, as well as listening to their suggestions on potential solutions. Sometimes they will see connections that you don’t – try everything!
• 3) When you are struggling, or know that a puzzle isn’t your bag, delegate it to a stronger teammate. When you are looking for that missing piece of a puzzle, pattern or cipher, let everyone know so that, should someone spot it in the corner of the room they won’t just pass it over.

Delegate

We all have strengths and weaknesses. If you come across a puzzle that requires a steady hand and suffer from a profound tremor, pass it on to your hand-eye- coordination whizz! Some teammates have been known to shout ‘maths’ to their more numerically-attuned friends when stumbling upon a basic sum that they don’t wish to solve. If you have the observation skills of a mole with cataracts, get your best searchers on the hunt for those tiny keys or hidden codes.

Be Tidy!

Once you’ve used a key, leave it in the lock. 99% of escape rooms have a ‘one key, one lock’ or ‘one code, one lock’ rule, meaning that once a key or code is used, it is not needed again. If you leave the key in the lock no one will mistake it for a freshly found key without a home. After an initial sweep of the r

After an initial sweep of the room a good team brings everything they’ve found to a communal area (like a table or floor space in the middle of the room) so that the entire group can analyse it and work out what items and puzzles might link with each other. If everything remains spread out it’s much harder to keep track.

Once you’ve used something (opened a combination lock, clearly used and completed pieces of a puzzle) create a discard pile that everyone is aware of, that way you can keep the room uncluttered and it is easier to see what is left to solve as opposed to examining the same items over and over again. Bear in mind, a small minority of games require you to reuse items – if you’re really stuck, have a look through the discard pile for any links

Don’t huddle

A congealed mass of humans is less effective than a number of separate team- mates! Whilst working together can speed up tricky puzzles or tasks, splitting up is also key. Many rooms have non-linear puzzles, meaning that you can all be working on separate things at the same time. The initial search of a room is a particularly good time to split up and conquer. Remember that communication becomes even more paramount at these times!