If you haven’t heard about the Top Escape Rooms Project, you should check it out. Seventy enthusiasts around the world got together and voted on the top 25 escape rooms!
In this episode, we caught up with Rich Bragg (also the co-founder of ClueKeeper), to discuss how he started the Top Escape Rooms Project. Instead of talking about the winning rooms, we talk more about the details on the genesis of the Enthusiast Choice Awards, or the “Braggs” as we like to call them.
It is now tradition to catch up with Lisa and David Spira of Room Escape Artist. We talk about a lot of things, and for a full time signature breakdown, check out REA’s post!
This is the photo talked about in the podcast. Photo courtesy of EscapeRoomZandvoort.nl.
For Escape Room and BBC’s Sherlock fans comes a new game called The Game Is Now. Manda and Errol get a chance to talk to the game director, Nick Moran, best known for creating one of the top escape room companies in the world, Time Run.
On October 2nd, 2018, Richard Bragg, Daniel Egnor, Amanda Harris, and Ana Ulin set the Guinness World Record for most escape rooms attended in one day! Listen in as they tell us logistics and anecdotes of accomplishing this amazing feat!
The Divas discuss their trips to Montreal and they also debate which has the greater rooms: Montreal, Toronto, or Ottawa? Contentious topics!
Mike and Ruby at Escaparium!
Over a thousand escape rooms, wow! The Divas chat with Sera Dodd and Sharan Gill, also known as S2, about escape rooms enthusiasm, game and puzzle design, and ERIC, an escape room conference in the UK.
And Manda got a chance to meet up with them!!
The Divas get together to discuss Errol’s post 13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design.
You may want to read the document first, because we reference it a lot!
Errol was in Los Angeles and he had a wonderful time. In this episode, he meets up with a number of escape room enthusiasts and interviews as many as he can. He also gets distracted a lot.
Here is a list of people interviewed:
David and Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist
Amanda Harris
Brian and Cam
Belle
Photo taken at Stash House
In this episode, Errol gets into a nerd competition with David Hernly. They also talk about escape room software and David's own Mythric Mystery Master, a software platform for running escape rooms!
Escape Rooms pretty much started in Asia, and their market has matured over the years. The Divas have a great chat with Yolanda Chiu of Asia Escape Game. She's from Taiwan and has been doing research on the escape room industry in Asia. Manda first met her when Yolanda gave a talk about at Up The Game 2018.
Errol and his family went to Boston! There, they met up with some other enthusiasts (Lisa and David Spira, James Cobalt), checked out Make Way for Ducklings statues, and also did eight escape rooms. It was an expensive trip but fun! Listen in as Errol talks and talks and talks about his experiences with Boston Escape Rooms.
You may not know, or care, but Errol has a daily webcomic about his life. He's quite the narcissist.
In this podcast, all the Divas chat with Russell Leasure, who will be holding a seminar at Transworld's Escape Room Conference called How to Unlock Your Game Master's Potential.
Listen in as we discuss hiring good game masters, being a good game master, and ghosting.
Next time, we'll get a cool picture of Russell doing actual game mastering. :D
Delaney Anderson and her crew of Portable Escapes run escape rooms at different comic conventions! Listen in as Manda and Errol discuss with her the ins and outs of running an escape room for the geeky masses.
Stephanie Frey hosts the Games in Schools & Libraries podcast here on Inverse Genius, and we got the chance to talk about her work creating escape rooms in libraries, doing an escape room camp, and using escape rooms to help educate children!
Manpans got a chance to attend a lot of seminars at Up the Game in the Netherlands. She attended Jasper Wille's seminar on "Meaningful Choice" and immediately decided to have him as a guest on our podcast.
Jasper Wille is a narrative designer and has been active in the world of Real Life Experiences since the early arrival of Escape Rooms in Western-Europe.
Listen in as they discuss the future of escape room narrative.
Having finished her whirlwind tour of the Netherlands, Manpans rounds up her thoughts on the Up the Game conference she attended. And Errol went to visit his parents in Calgary and did seven rooms over the long weekend.
Listen in as they ruminate on narrative, puzzle difficulty, and Manda's drinking habits.
Manda Whitney was just in the Netherlands attending the escape room conference Up The Game! She got a chance to talk to a whole host of people, and for your reference, we've included a timeline for the very first time. We should be doing this for all of our podcasts.
0:00:25 - DAY 1
0:06:40 - Juliana, Ariel, and Mike of Escape Room in a Box
0:13:58 - James Cobalt and Salem
0:23:18 - DAY 2
0:26:51 - Bill Sunderland of Escape This Podcast
0:28:57 - Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist
0:30:44 - Jake Walling of Escape Maze
0:34:16 - Watson by Sherlocked
0:39:41 - Time Quest Lab
0:41:44 - Lina of Exit Ventures
0:43:00 - Loco - Urban Escape Games Platform
0:44:17 - Lauren Scott of Evolo Room Escape
0:47:00 - Sebastian Bayer of Tabtracks
0:49:23 - Yolanda Chiu of Asia Escape Game
0:54:33 - DAY 3
0:58:50 - Benito Suppa of Durham Escape Rooms and Jake Wall of Escape Maze
1:02:10 - Ethan Rodriguez-Torrent of Escape Industries
1:04:28 - Dani Siller of Escape This Podcast
1:09:11 - Nicole soon to be owner
1:11:03 - Nick Moran of Time Run
1:13:51 - Bill and Dani of Escape This Podcast
1:16:13 - Ralph of Kosmos Games, producer of the Exit games
1:17:57 - Toon of De Kelder in Ghent, Belgium
So much fun!
In response to the controversial topic of public games and playing with strangers, Scott Nicholson shared this wonderful post on the FB Enthusiast group called The Trust Spectrum by Raph Koster, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design.
Manda and Errol discuss the Trust Spectrum and see how it applies to escape rooms!
Are escape rooms good for team building? Surprisingly, not really. In this two hour special, Listen in as the Divas interview Dr. Linda Carson, a professor of Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo. She has a Ph.D. in Psychology (Behavioural and Cognitive Neuroscience) and teaches teamwork, creativity, design thinking, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
All the Divas are back to talk about Hint Giving in Escape Rooms!
People asking for hints during the #CryptexHunt!
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