Escape Room Rumours -25 September 2017

news-spiral

Welcome to your weekly escape room rumour round-up with updates on new games, venues and media mentions.

This site is always on the look-out for new games or venues that are opening, references in the media or anything else that might be of interest to the readers, so please do send an email if you spot anything of interest. That applies to owners too – feel free to send me your news for inclusion here. Don’t be shy!

On to the news

That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect or if you’re aware of other news, significant discounts or competitions, then let me know via email or in the comments below and I’ll include updates in the next edition.

Thanks for reading!

Escape Room Rumours – 18 September 2017

news-spiral

Welcome to your weekly escape room rumour round-up with updates on new games, venues and media mentions.

This site is always on the look-out for new games or venues that are opening, references in the media or anything else that might be of interest to the readers, so please do send an email if you spot anything of interest. That applies to owners too – feel free to send me your news for inclusion here. Don’t be shy!

On to the news

That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect or if you’re aware of other news, significant discounts or competitions, then let me know via email or in the comments below and I’ll include updates in the next edition.

Thanks for reading!

By the numbers: UK vs the rest of the world

A couple of people have asked questions recently related to how many escape rooms the UK can sustain. Truth be told, I don’t really know the answer but I was interested enough to try to pull together a few statistics from other countries. I grabbed them from anywhere I could get them easily – sometimes just taking them direct from a report and sometimes finding a list and adding them up by hand.

The numbers are inevitably approximate – I may have made minor errors when counting, the lists aren’t necessary complete and games appear and disappear on an almost daily basis in most of these regions. I do believe the numbers are about right.

The table below is ordered by number of rooms per million population to give you a feel for how densely filled the markets are. Obviously a lot of factors affect these numbers – planning laws, when the first game appeared, labour costs, tourist numbers etc. Read into the data what you will…

Country Population (m) Rooms (/m pop) Source (rooms)
 NL  17  612 (36)  Escape Talk
 Poland  38  986 (26)  Lock Me
 Luxembourg  0.57  11 (19)  Escape Talk
 USA  323  6000 (18.6)  Facebook thread – David Spira estimate.
 UK  65  855 (13.2)  Exit Games
 Singapore  5.6  68 (12.1)  TripAdvisor and primary research
 France  67  811 (12.1)  Wescape
 Belgium  11  120 (11)  Escape Talk
 Australia  24  195 (8.1)  Escape Room Hunters
 Austria  8.7  65 (7.5)  Lukas Rauscher from Crime Runners

Populations based on Wikipedia’s best guess.

If you’ve got any other statistics that I can add then let me know via comments below. I won’t add them indefinitely but if I get more stats over the next couple of weeks then I’m happy to drop them in.

Escape Room Rumours – 11 September 2017

news-spiral

Welcome to your weekly escape room rumour round-up with updates on new games, venues and media mentions.

This site is always on the look-out for new games or venues that are opening, references in the media or anything else that might be of interest to the readers, so please do send an email if you spot anything of interest. That applies to owners too – feel free to send me your news for inclusion here. Don’t be shy!

On to the news

  • General
    • The big news this week is the announcement of the first UK escape room conference in Nottingham. Tickets are on sale and running out fast so if you’re an owner then I’d recommend you get in and book!
    • It’s not really news but this site’s detailed escape room listing has now been upgraded to include information about duplicate games. Hover over the duplicate icon (duplicate icon) and you’ll get information about where else the game is present in the UK including alternative names. Remember that there are now region specific pages too – follow the links from the top of the page.
  • North East England
  • East of England
    • First mention of a new escape room in East Anglia. Escape Rooms Suffolk is set to open in Bury St Edmonds with a single room – no date as yet.
  • Scotland
  • South East England
  • London
    • Escape Plan opens a new game this week – Battle for Britain
  • Ireland
  • West Midlands
  • Yorkshire and the Humber
  • North West England
    • Lucardo close Contamination this week.

That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect or if you’re aware of other news, significant discounts or competitions, then let me know via email or in the comments below and I’ll include updates in the next edition.

Thanks for reading!

UK Escape Room Conference – 16 Oct 2017

You might have been envious if you read the article on Exit Games earlier in the year about Up the Game in the Netherlands. Well, if so, good news – the inaugural Escape Room Industry Conference has just been announced, and it’s being held in Nottingham on 16th October this year.

Details are still being released but I’m reliably informed that Nick Moran of Time Run fame will be reprising his pitch on the Tools of Immersion that was well received at Up the Game. On top of that you can expect talks and panels on technology, set design, franchising, in-game feedback, clueing systems, educational opportunities and promotion with more being announced in the coming weeks. That’s a huge range of content that should cover pretty much all your escape room needs.

The day starts at 10am and the talks/panels continue through till 6pm with a break for lunch. It doesn’t end there, though – they’ve booked out space for after-conference networking opportunities which will be available through until 11pm. Sounds like a fun-filled day!

If that sounds of interest then you should probably move quickly – tickets are limited and they’re priced incredibly cheaply to maximise access. I don’t expect them to last long. The initial capacity has been set at 70 people. While there’s a hint that they can extend that to cater for more people, it looks like they’d need to negotiate extra capacity at the venue so you’re taking a risk if you don’t get in soon. Tickets are available here.

After several successful unconferences, it’s great to see the team at Escapologic and Sarah from S² take the opportunity to try out something new. Thanks also to those industry heavyweights who are helping everyone move forward with their games by putting on presentations.

Escape Room Rumours – 4 September 2017

news-spiral

Welcome to your weekly escape room rumour round-up with updates on new games, venues and media mentions.

This site is always on the look-out for new games or venues that are opening, references in the media or anything else that might be of interest to the readers, so please do send an email if you spot anything of interest. That applies to owners too – feel free to send me your news for inclusion here. Don’t be shy!

On to the news

  • Yorkshire and the Humber
    • It’s been open for a few weeks now but I keep on forgetting to add it in: Stuck in the Riddle opened in Huddersfield in mid-August with their first game entitled The Dungeon.
  • South East England
  • East of England
    • First mention of an escape room in Bury St Edmunds. Escape Rooms Suffolk have just a single game listed on their site for now – Death Row.
  • East Midlands
    • UK Escape Games in Melton Mowbray and Mansfield are running a significant discount off their games in September – head to the website for details.
    • Alien is opening at iLocked in Nottingham
  • South West England
  • London

That’s all I’m aware of. If any of the above is incorrect or if you’re aware of other news, significant discounts or competitions, then let me know via email or in the comments below and I’ll include updates in the next edition.

Thanks for reading!