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I Failed an Escape Room. Am I Stupid?

Bungie jumping on a full stomach; that’s stupid. Failing an escape room; not so stupid. Your success in escape rooms has nothing to do with your intelligence, in fact, it can tell you some fascinating things about yourself. Keep reading to learn what Escape Games Canada thinks an escape room can teach you about yourself, your friends, and the people who made the game.

It’s Too Late! I’m Too Full!

A lot of people love to visit escape rooms at night, right after dinner. This is a great way to extend your night out with your friends and have some fun. We understand that coordinating a group isn’t always easy and evenings usually end up being the best time to accommodate everyone, but these late night games could jeopardize your chances of escape. Science says that playing late at night or right after a giant meal might hinder your ability to think critically under pressure. Our play data confirms this; success rates tend to drop significantly immediately after dinner hours and into the late evening. Does this mean that smarter people go to bed earlier? Absolutely not! Our next point will explain what we’re talking about.

Escape Rooms are a Learned Skill.

Practice can improve many skills, and your ability to solve escape rooms is no exception. The type of skills required to beat escape rooms are typically things your brain would not encounter daily . We find that engineers come in with a pre-wired ability to dissect problems, while teachers come in with excellent communication skills and patience. What do we mean by all of this? Play a few games and you’ll start to realize escape rooms will become easier for you. Since escape rooms exercise seldom used skills, playing frequently will keep you in practice and make you better at them, just like riding a bike.

Maybe the Designer is Stupid.

Designing a great escape room takes a lot of creativity, a healthy understanding of human behavior, and most importantly, a bountiful knowledge of game design. These three elements represent the perfect trifecta of interactive design but it’s surprisingly hard to balance them. Escape room businesses are run by people after all, and all those people are prone to error.  Escape Games Canada tests every game design until we are satisfied, and we pride ourselves on designing for escape room companies all over the world. We also encourage owners to build and design their own escape rooms. Unfortunately, there are some escape room owners who don’t share our passion. Don’t worry though, a lot of great companies out there are still learning, and they love to hear your feedback. The only way we’ve been able to refine our designs is through listening to our customers and collecting tons of play data. Listening and observing our customers has helped us develop our building skills and we encourage every other owner to do the same.

These reasons are exactly why we talk to everyone who books at Escape Games Canada. Based on your experience, we can help pick the right mission for your group. We can’t tell how smart you are over the phone, but we’ve designed our games for players of all experience levels. We’re confident we can find a challenge for you whether you’re new to escape rooms, or you’ve played 100 games.