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I went to an escape room in eastern Europe recently. The escape room was a lot of fun, we booked two rooms that were mostly science focussed (one was about Nicola Tesla and the other was a lab where you needed to find the cure against a zombie invasion).

I talked to the owner a bit, and he said that their room was also part of a franchise. They sent the floor plan of the room to the game provider and received the full instructions for setting up the room, as well as a shipment of all the electronics and other stuff needed for the puzzles.

Of course every "instance" of such a room is unique in some way. But all in all it seems to be a good concept - a company with some smart people comes up with interesting puzzles, and escape rooms all over the world implement those ideas in an actual building.

I played a Tesla room as well, in Serbia (Novi Sad to be exact). It was a ton of fun, and they explained that a lot of the escape rooms actually originate from that area of the world.

I have no idea if this is accurate or not, but it definitely was one of the best ER experiences I've had so far.

Among the operators you know, how much emphasis is there on story writing? In my experience, the most enjoyable games (in Japan) are the ones with rich stories that tie in well with the puzzles. However, I get the impression that outside Japan the rooms are more focused on gimmicks.

What would you say is the distribution of emphasis on 1) story, 2) the individual puzzles, 3) gimmicks/“wow” factor, 4) the room itself (i.e. decor)?

Are there any particular trends you’ve noticed in terms of themes or gimmicks?

I think your impression may well be correct, although I've not tried any Japanese rooms myself, only read reviews of them.

For the operators I know, most focus on 2) and 4). Most believe the puzzles are the core hook and must be well designed. Then they believe the puzzles have to fit the room theme. If a story can be squeezed in too, then they try, but it's rarely the driver. And gimmicks and wow factor aren't usually high on the list, but some operators (arguably us) do find these make customers want to play when they hear about them, so they're certainly not ignored.

Out of curiosity, how exactly does this aspect work?

> Our rooms track players' progress and introduce easier and easier hints over time, and eventually bypass puzzles (with justifiable story reasons) so everyone sees all the interesting parts.

How do you justify bypassing puzzles and introducing hints while not breaking immersion?

Just a quick guess for a possible explanation - a computer in the room is trying to crack the password(in a visible way, matrix-style flying text on screen), but it will take 20 minutes to do so. You are encouraged to find it yourself somewhere in the room and progress quicker - but if you fail, the computer "succeeds" at decoding and prints the password.

Yes, that's a good example. Basically in all our games there's some form of unseen protagonist/antagonist (e.g. a ghost, outside help via radio/TV/emails, an AI system, etc) and it helps the players over time.

We try to do things like detect partial solutions that might indicate the players are close to a full solution, because the worst thing is to bypass a puzzle when the players are actively engaged with it and having fun. On the other hand, if we know there's more interesting gameplay to come, and the players are spending ages on a particular puzzle, we want them to progress. This is the part where some enthusiasts disagree with our approach - some of them would rather fail than be pushed through. Fortunately, the bulk of our players would rather be given increasingly easy hints until they "solve" things themselves.

> in such a supply-limited market there doesn't seem to be any shortage of new customers.

The article (can't quote because paywall) specifically mentioned the highly competitive nature of the space as making it difficult for new entrants. Higher startup costs were specifically mentioned but I imagine that extends to marketing/customer mind share.

You seem to be describing a more collegiate atmosphere than the article does around competition. Do you think this is because of your position as a more established player or do you think the article overemphasized that (or quoted someone who wanted that message to get out there)?

I see three classes of operators in the space. A) Mum and Dad small business owners who are making enough to survive and enjoy the work, but aren't making enough to expand. B) Get rich quick operators who think it's a booming market with low starting costs, and mostly buy franchises or designs from other groups. C) Empire builders who try to franchise or sell their designs to others (mostly people in B.)

The groups in A are all friendly and collegiate. The groups in B are less so. We see group A continuing happily, but not really growing or turning significant profits - one of my friends in this group described it as "I bought myself a fun job".

We've seen a fair few groups in B fold. As the article suggests, you can't start with a mere $7000 now - customer expectations are higher, and there are enough review sites (e.g. TripAdvisor) that anyone with a low quality game will be called out pretty quickly.

Groups in C (include Nate Martin from the article) all seem to be doing well, but it's a hard slog to get sufficiently well known to become a primary supplier to others. My company is kind of in C, but we partnered early with a key chain in our geography and there's both good and bad to that choice. Not personally operating our rooms certainly has some drawbacks, but being able to build multiple copies of a room simultaneously has enormous cost savings too.