Our game guides get asked all the time about what it’s like to monitor our games and watch teams as they try to escape. Sometimes, the adrenaline of trying to escape gets the best of people and everything else goes out the window. So, we thought we’d give you a behind-the-scenes look at some of the craziest things that have ever happened inside escape rooms. Some stories are from our own locations and some are from other companies who have shared their stories online, but they’re all exciting!
People Who Give Up On Their Escape
These people come in with determination and the best intentions, but somewhere along the way they get caught up in the room and decide to just enjoy the experience. Forget about the escape goal – these teams just want to have a good time with whatever time they have left in the room.
1. Reddit user frizzykid has a perfect example of this type of story – the team’s attempts at progress were failing, so they decided to take advantage of a piano that was part of their game room: “One of my friends was a super good pianist and actually walked over to the piano and started playing a bunch of songs on it. Everyone in the group [was] singing.” Way to make the best of the situation, team!
2. Reddit user Cat_Call__ has another great story about people having a good time, even once they realized they wouldn’t be able to escape. He explains that once, during a game, two women realized they weren’t going to make it out. Rather than accepting defeat, they decided to tear up a piece of paper to use as confetti for when he came back into the room to stop their time. He says, “I watched them do it on the live feed of the game, and there was nothing I could do but knowingly walk into the oncoming flurry of a teensy tiny bed of paper.” At least they were in good spirits!
People Who Want To Escape So Badly That They’ll Do Anything
Unlike the first category of people, these teams will never forget that their goal is to escape. They’re determined to complete their task no matter what it takes – even if that means skipping steps as opposed to solving the clues the way they’re meant to be solved.
3. We get it – once you step into your game room, you’re in a whole new world where everything you see is a potential clue. However, some of our teams take this a little too literally. In all of our rooms at The Escape Game, we supply a bin or basket for players to keep their belongings while they play. Sometimes, people get so caught up in the game that they forget the stuff in the basket isn’t part of the game! We’ve had people go through their own team’s purses, jackets, and even wallets trying to find clues before remembering that those are their own items! Good for them for being thorough – but maybe be just a little less thorough next time.
4. Reddit user sunny_person has a funny story about friends of theirs who went to play an escape game. As chance would have it, the friends were locksmiths and decided to use that to their advantage during the game. They escaped, but they did it without using any of the clues in the room! They just cracked all the locks one by one until they were able to find the way out. Definitely an inventive strategy, but probably not a very fun one.
5. Sometimes, when teams realize they probably aren’t going to escape, they spend their final moments in the room trying anything they can think of as a last-ditch effort to make it out. Our game guides have definitely seen this happen, and Reddit user MoonpieJunkie has a similar story. He explains that when his team realized that they only had a couple minutes left, they started “yelling and smashing buttons/flipping switches/pulling levers in some insane hope that something would work and they would win.” At least no one can say they gave up!
People Who Find Creative Ways To Problem Solve
These people are so creative that they probably don’t even realize they came up with a new way to solve a clue. Their efforts are often the most memorable – after all, we see thousands of people come in and try to solve things from every perspective imaginable. Seeing an approach we’ve never seen before is a rare and special event that won’t be soon forgotten.
6. Reddit user Yocheeseburgers explains an escape game that his team played where two locked drawers were stacked on top of each other. Rather than unlocking both drawers separately, one team member got the top drawer unlocked and then just removed that drawer completely to be able to reach the items in the (still locked) drawer below. They may have skipped a few steps, but talk about ingenuity!
7. Reddit user hawkeytown30 has a story about creative problem solving (and a decent amount of luck) that is so good, we’re going to let it speak for itself. He says, “We were supposed to get the world Waterloo from a series of clues and use a dictionary to find that the battle of Waterloo was in 1815. Well we got the word ‘eaterloi’ instead of Waterloo. We assumed that it was an anagram and we used a word scrambler to get aerolite from it. Using the dictionary we found out that aerolite was invented in 1815.” What a crazy coincidence!
Miscellaneous Crazy Stories
8. Something our game guides have noticed is a trend where for no reason, several groups in a row will think the same way – and not because they’re on the right track. In our research, we learned that this isn’t unique to The Escape Game – other escape room companies online have confirmed the pattern. For example, say there’s a book on a bookshelf that groups normally completely overlook. For some reason, as soon as one group notices the book and thinks it’s the key to their escape, several other groups later will have the same idea – even though there’s no correlation between the groups whatsoever. Some people theorize that it has something to do with the item giving off an appearance of having been used while other people theorize that somehow, your ideas stay in the room after you’ve left. No matter what the reason is, it’s a strange coincidence that’s hard to ignore.
9. Believe it or not, escape game proposals are becoming more and more popular among players. Almost every escape room company will have a story about someone asking to propose in one of their rooms, usually by replacing one of the final clues with the ring. We’ve had this happen right here at The Escape Game, too! In The Escape Game Austin location, a couple got engaged in our Prison Break game. That’s definitely a memorable hour for everyone involved!
10. Last but not least, at The Escape Game, we encourage customers to use the restroom before the game so you don’t interrupt your game once you get in the swing of things. But, we get it, sometimes you just have to leave the room to go to the bathroom. In one of our rooms, a player was so immersed in the experience that they didn’t even bother to leave the room, they took the opportunity to pee behind a tree in our Gold Rush game. Of course, the game guide stepped in and the team had to leave the room for a while so we could completely sanitize the game before letting them continue. When in doubt, use the restroom before you play so you don’t end up in this situation!
