Mid-January exit game news

Newspaper with spectacles and pencilCongratulations to The Escape Room Manchester, which opened yesterday and is rolling out the last three of its five rooms today and tomorrow. More news from them, surely, in the weeks to come!

This site greatly enjoyed the coolplaces guide to exit games in London, comparing and contrasting the approaches taken by London’s five oldest indoor sites and declaring superlatives without picking a single superlative. Fingers crossed that they keep exploring what else there is on offer and continue to share their opinions. Similarly, a welcoming tip of the hat to the attractively-designed Escape Rooms London; no clue who’s behind it, but they’re clearly off to a good start. This site’s blogroll needs attention shortly.

Further afield, Dr. Scott Nicholson, a Professor at Syracuse University in upstate New York, launched a large-scale academic survey of exit games last year; he has released a video about the intentions for his survey. One key question: do exit games have lessons for interactive learning experiences within libraries and museums? What an interesting question, and it would take someone with the breadth of knowledge of games in so many different media, and such an accomplished academic pedigree, to look into this. If you run a site, want to participate in the survey and haven’t been contacted yet, see Scott’s recent tweet and get in touch with him.

This site very much enjoyed this presentation and discussion of their design principles from the people behind the Spark of Resistance exit game in Portland, Oregon. Going further, it’s probably a must-watch (though not necessarily a must-agree!) for anyone interested in, or in the early stages of, putting their own location together. The team also discussed their facility on this podcast episode so it’s great to get to see some pictures and enjoy more of their thoughts.

From factual exit rooms to fictional ones: this site’s favourite librarian was enjoying a recent Publisher’s Weekly book deals report, which is surprisingly relevant. Scroll down two-thirds of the way to the report of deals signed by Denis Markell. He’s writing a young adult novel about a scenario that seems to have a lot in common with an exit game. Exciting!

Saving something very strong and close to home for last, Clue HQ made a very interesting announcement on Wednesday, with further developments in the last day. More on this story next!

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