7 Ways To Prepare For your Escape Room Experience

Have you booked an escape room experience? Are you wondering if there’s anything you can do to prepare for your game play?  The answer is yes, there are ways to prepare for your game—and luckily for you they don’t involve studying the Gordian Knot! Here are a few easy steps you can take to prepare for your escape game experience.

1. Read About Our Games Beforehand

There is information about all of our themes on our website. We’ve got descriptions, videos, and even blogs containing all sorts of information about our games. All of these resources can help you prepare for your escape game. Not only will they give you some information about the storyline of the game, but they also give you a hint about the kind of experience you’re going to have—whether you’re exploring the haunted Rosewood Manor, or saving the world from the evil Spider Technologies in Cluetivity’s Operation Mindfall.

2. Pick Your Team Wisely

As the saying goes, you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your escape room teammates! (That is how the saying goes, isn’t it??) If you’re going to be locked in a room for an hour, to ensure your experience is an enjoyable one, you’ll want to make sure you build a good team. Escape rooms, while designed for fun, can also become stressful when you’re down to the last ten minutes and still have a few puzzles to go. Make sure that your team is comprised of people with whom you know you work well, and with whom you can have a laugh —regardless of the outcome of the game.

In addition to the composition of your team, you’ll also want to give thought to the size of your team.  Check out our blog on Minimum and Maximum Players.

3. Consider Your Puzzling Prowess

At Quest Reality Games, we offer THREE different types of experiences.

Escape rooms are a learned skill, and they can be challenging for newbies. For those who are trying escape games for the first time, you can ask your Game Master for an easy experience. And for the seasoned enthusiasts who want to increase the challenge, you can ask for a difficult experience. Change your mind mid-game? No problem. Just let your Game Master know, and you can change the difficultly level of your experience at any time.

While this doesn’t change any of the puzzles or physical aspects of the game, it does change how our Game Masters interact with you. Before you begin, consider discussing with your teammates whether you’d like to try our easy, standard, or difficult experience level. Don’t worry about making a wrong choice, you can change your minds at any time during your game play—just let you Game Master know!

4. What To Wear

There’s no dress code to play our escape rooms, but you should dress for comfort and for movement. There’s no climbing or crawling in our themes, so skirts or a dress can be worn. If you’re thinking of playing an escape room as something to do after work, you might want to consider bringing a change of clothes with you to the office and ditching the necktie before your gameplay, so you can enjoy the full benefit of 100% blood-flow to your thinker!

Dressing comfortably makes it easier for you to solve puzzles. You might not need to be climbing around the room, but wearing something that you’re comfortable in helps you to better enjoy your experience and allows you to focus more on the puzzle than trying to pull your long dress away from the floors

Some of our rooms do contain hay and sand, so you definitely don’t want to be wearing nice pants, or a fancy dress. We recommend wearing comfortable shoes—it’s no fun navigating your way through the Great Pyramid in a pair of 3” heels! Don’t worry—if you do find yourself ready to play while wearing your nice patent leather, we offer shoe covers.

5. Get There Early

For most players—both experienced and first-timers alike—the element of the unknown, and the uncertainty of what happens once you’re locked in that room can be exciting and also a bit unnerving. One way to mitigate any potential anxiety about the experience is to give yourself plenty of time at the venue before the escape game begins. This will give everyone in the group sufficient time to take care of signing waivers and securing belongings in lockers before the game begins without feeling rushed. More importantly, it ensures you maximize your time in the room to solve puzzles. Arriving early gives everyone time to use the washroom so you don’t have to spend precious game time to answer Nature’s call while the clock is ticking back in the room. The last thing you want to do is limit your time in the room by arriving late to the venue or wasting game time taking care of things that could have been done before your game time began.

6. Make Sure You Understand The Rules

Every escape game facility operates slightly different, and you can’t win at their game unless you know the rules! Your Game Master will go through all the rules before your game beings so that you are familiar with what you can and cannot do in a given room. Listen to them. We get it, you’re excited and anxious to get started. But the rules are not something to ‘get over with’ so you can hurry up and play the game—they are essential to your enjoyment, and the enjoyment of anyone planning to play the game after you. For instance, if they say not to take anything off the walls, don’t take anything off the walls! You don’t want to lose time if someone has to come into the room to tell you not to do something, or have your experience (or that of future players) ruined because you broke something you weren’t supposed to touch. Plus, you’ll be wasting time doing things that won’t help you escape. Once you’ve been given the rules, be sure to ask any unanswered questions that the rules haven’t covered.

7. Ask Questions

It might seem like an obvious statement, but asking questions can be very helpful. Our Game Masters have a lot to tell you, but they can’t cover everything, so if you don’t understand something your Game Master is saying, or if they leave you wondering about something, make sure you ask! Having a clear understanding of game-play rules and what to expect will benefit you and your team. Not to mention that asking the right questions can sometimes lead you to nuggets of valuable information. Every tidbit can be helpful to your game.