We ran our very first commercial escape room three years ago, on the last weekend of January, 2018.
To celebrate our 3rd ‘Birthday’, we interviewed directors, Megan and Tanya, to see what they remembered from that first room.
Why did you decide to run an escape room?
As part of a regeneration project for Coronation Square, we wanted to encourage more people to the area and offer something unique and exciting that did not currently exist anywhere in Cheltenham. We knew escape rooms were an activity that was quickly growing in popularity and we believed we could create exciting and immersive experiences that were accessible to everyone. With a team of people from all different backgrounds, we were able to combine our skills to create something that we felt could compete within the escape rooms industry.
How did you feel about running one?
I was nervous at first because I’d never done anything like this before, but I love working with people and it was so great to see people’s reactions to what we’d created and it made me feel much more excited every time we got to design a new room! It was a great challenge to try something new and it’s constantly teaching me new things.”
Tanya
I was super excited to be involved – I’ve always loved puzzles and have played escape room games online for as long as I could remember. Having the opportunity to design my own was fantastic as I love being creative and being able to bring all my artistic ideas to life. It was stressful at first making sure everything went well with the games but after seeing how much people enjoyed them it made me excited to do more
Megan
Why was it just one weekend?
At first we were experimenting. As a new experience that hadn’t been offered in the area before, we wanted to make sure there was an audience for it. Due to this, we wanted to run as a pop up and so we worked with Hester’s Way Resource Centre who were extremely supportive of our venture and allowed us to use space in their centre over the weekends when it was not in use. Running for one weekend at a time allowed us to get a good number of groups to play in a short space of time, so we could quickly learn how to improve and make even better rooms.
What was the first theme?
Our first theme was Stop That Thief – a storyline loosely based on happenings at GCHQ where players had to gain intel about a criminal organisation and stop them before it was too late! We wanted to design themes around things that happen in Cheltenham to really cement ourselves as a local company, so we subsequently offered themes based on the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Science Festival.
How did you get the ideas for the puzzles?
We get inspiration from various different places. We love visiting other escape rooms as well as regularly playing puzzle games online to get ideas for puzzles, however most of our ideas were made during brainstorming sessions, when we’d work with various volunteers, students and staff members who would bounce ideas off each other and together we’d come up with some really cool ideas.
What kind of props did you use?
As we wanted to change our rooms on a regular basis, we were working with a smaller budget than most escape rooms, so we had to get creative with our prop design. One big ethos of our business is to be sustainable, so we get a large portion of our props from second hand and charity shops. For more bespoke props we worked closely with students from GlosCol and UoG who produced some amazing work to really bring our design to life.
Was it expensive to run?
We quickly adapted to making it work on the budget that we had, and concentrated more on producing good quality storylines and puzzles than high production set design. It cost more time than money, but the amount of the time that was put in by everyone to make it work meant that we were able to get where we are now.
How did you advertise it?
At first we started by largely advertising through social media and word of mouth. For the first 3 rooms we ran an offer for groups to win a game if they liked and shared, so this really helped boost the interest for these. The reaction we got from people who played our rooms was fantastic, and many of them went home and told their friends and soon we saw returning groups of players who enjoyed our past rooms. Over the years we’ve advertised through various channels but we still feel there’s no better advertising than an honest recommendation from a satisfied customer. We make sure to keep our social media regularly updated with information about our rooms and interesting posts to keep customers engaged – you can follow us here: @escaperoomscheltenham on Facebook/Instagram @EscapeChelt on Twitter
How did people respond to the game?
Our first reaction was great, we were able to get some really thorough feedback from the teams who played which we were able to implement into our later rooms. It was great to see teams sharing their photos on their own social accounts and it was exciting when teams who played our first rooms began to return when we offered new games.
What did you learn from that first room?
Lots. It was so interesting because it ran differently that we visualised in our heads – there’s so many things that you don’t think about until they happen, and even now we’ll sometimes still discover something new! We learned so much about how different people interact with both each other and the room and it allowed us to think more clearly about designing rooms that are suitable for a wider audience. Everything from visuals to room layout to puzzle design was built up through the first few rooms and we now feel we offer something really solid and exciting.
How different is Escape Rooms Cheltenham now from 3yrs ago?
We’ve come so far in 3 years (albeit 1 of those years was pretty much non existent!) and we feel like we’ve learned so much since then. We’ve now produced 15 escape rooms as well as 2 offsite, large team games, a mobile puzzle box, and 3 print and play at home games. We’ve got a great team of games masters who all bring something special to the team and allow us to run our games to full capacity. It’s great to look back at everything we’ve done and we cannot wait to reveal the next chapter!