These are some of the games we will be covering in our escape room series.
Games in Schools and Libraries is kicking off a new series on escape room related products for our blog. In our subsequent articles we will cover the breadth and depth of store-bought tabletop escape experiences, print and play activities, and even games that aren’t (strictly speaking) in the escape room genre but still evoke enough aspects to appeal to the same audience.
Few experiences are more engaging than escape rooms, solving puzzles and overcoming obstacles are made even more enticing by the physical nature of the activity and the race against the clock. There are a variety of pre-packaged escape products that aim to reproduce one or more of the essential elements of the escape room experience, such as cooperative puzzle solving, critical thinking, and doing all of this under the clock.
Many of the tabletop products we will be covering have novel takes on many of the same problems - how to present a series of puzzles in such a way that players can continue to progress in solving interesting problems without getting stuck in such a way that the experience is destroyed by an insurmountable feeling of bafflement. Should players get truly stuck there is no sympathetic Game Master to deliver hints, but all of the games in the escape room genre have had to deal with this issue, frequently finding unique ways to present hints or allow players to progress even if they can’t follow the designer’s sense of logic.
We will be talking about all of these issues over at the Library Escape Room Enthusiasts group, and even discussing some of these games before the reviews are posted. If you have something to say, or are just looking for more opinions after the blog post has dropped, that’ll be the place to go.
Link to the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1922174474731812/
Games in Schools and Libraries is produced in association with Inverse Genius and the Georgetown County Library System.
Games in Schools and Libraries Guild at Board Game Geek
Email us: schoolsandlibraries@gmail.com