Tuesday is Puzzled Pint day in London and Manchester

Puzzled Pint London logoPuzzled Pint Manchester logoThe second Tuesday of every month is always Puzzled Pint day! The Pint has been growing around the world and this month there are set to be thirty meetings around the planet, from New Zealand to Europe to the west coast of North America. For the first time, this includes two meetings in different UK cities; London is well into its third year of Puzzled Pint and now Manchester is diving in. As you can see, London’s shades of red and blue are roundel-inspired, whereas Manchester takes its hues from football colours. There’s no reason why other UK cities couldn’t host their own versions; it just needs someone to take responsibility for doing so.

The simplest way to think of Puzzled Pint is to imagine a pub quiz that you solve with a team of your friends, but replace the quiz questions with puzzles: all sorts of puzzles – word puzzles, picture puzzles, maybe codes, perhaps maths or logic puzzles – and usually very good ones. The atmosphere is deliberately very accessible and hints are freely available, so everyone, from first-timers onwards, can have the fun of surprising themselves by solving puzzles that they thought they would never be able to solve. It’s probably more fun if you come with a group, but if you come alone then the organisers will help you find a team and hopefully make new friends. There’s no charge for taking part!

Take a look at this month’s location puzzle; you’re more likely to overthink it than underthink it, and the style may give you a very exciting sense of the theme for the month. As ever, hints are available; once you’ve got the answer, the London and Manchester locations are revealed. In London, there’s a single giant location, but it’s a good one; you need to submit a response because places are limited – and if you do submit a RSVP and cannot attend, please submit a cancellation so that someone else might use the place that you won’t be taking up. (The Manchester location has no RSVP requirement yet.)

The nominal timing of the event is 7pm to 10pm, but there’s some flexibility – and your team’s timing only starts when you get the puzzles, no matter what time you turn up. Please bring a pair of scissors if you can.

For Schools: the 2016 Alan Turing Cryptography Competition

Black-and-white photo of Alan TuringPerhaps this article is a bit of a repeat which makes it a bit of a cheat, but some things do crop up year after year and it has been edited for fact-checking and freshness.

This site previously discussed the National Cipher Challenge, held for teams of full-time students under 18 years of age. Happily, the cryptography season is not just one competition long each year; ever since the University of Manchester’s School of Mathematics celebrated the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing in 2012, each year there has been a cryptography competition for school students. 2016 sees the fifth edition; the first chapter – and thus the first cipher to solve – is released tomorrow, probably at around 4pm or so.

Prizes are available, but only for teams consisting of no more than four pre-Sixth-Form participants, so the limit is year 11 in England and Wales, S4 in Scotland and year 12 in Northern Ireland. There is provision for non-competitive teams to take part without scoring; here there is no restriction on numbers or ages so teams featuring overage students, teachers, parents or members of the general public outside the education system can take part purely for the fun of it. This year also sees the first edition of a sibling team mathematics competition, MathsBombe, which runs along somewhat similar lines and where Sixth Form students are allowed to play.

The competition follows the story of two young cipher sleuths, Mike and Ellie, as they get caught up in an adventure to unravel the Artificial Adventure. Every week or two weeks a new chapter of the story is released, each with a cryptographic puzzle to solve (…) There are six chapters in total (plus an epilogue to conclude the story). Points can be earned by cracking each code and submitting your answer.” The more quickly you crack each code, the more points you win for each of the six chapters. The chapters are released weekly at first but slow down to fortnightly as the chapters get harder and half-terms start to get in the way.

Prizes sponsored by Skyscanner (founded by two former computer scientists from the University of Manchester!) are presented to members of the three top-scoring teams overall, but each chapter also awards additional prizes to the first team to solve it correctly and spot prizes to five correctly-solving teams selected at random.

The really interesting thing is that the top prizes are awarded in person at the annual Alan Turing Cryptography Day. A video was posted of the 2015 day, and here’s a report from 2014: “Schoolchildren who had enjoyed taking part in the online competition were invited to spend an afternoon of code-breaking action in the Alan Turing Building. Nearly 200 children (…) enjoyed a wide range of activities including: interacting with Enigma machine apps running on iPads, a talk entitled `Enigma Variations: Alan Turing and the Enigma Machine’, some maths busking, a Q&A session with the competition organisers, as well as a live cryptography challenge which involved schools having to crack three codes in a one-hour period.

This site really enjoyed the part of the video where the kids at the day emphasised how much they enjoyed the live competition and the factor of time pressure. You can see where this is going! If there’s a self-selecting audience who love cracking codes against the clock, surely – surely – this would be a fantastic opportunity for an exit game (particularly one with a branch in Manchester itself – but, really, anyone anywhere, particularly one which saw itself as a national player) to become involved with sponsorship.

What would be in it for you? Especially if you can arrange a live challenge, there could be the chance to get the word out to hundreds of children who have proved themselves not only sufficiently interested in puzzles to enter a cryptography contest but sufficiently talented to do really well at it. On a very slightly cynical note, you might think of this as a way to reach 200 families, or more, who are likely to be right in the middle of your target audience and likely to want to play again and again. Seems like such a natural fit!

Good news for mid-December 2015

Cartoon of people reading newspapers and a bookToday feels like a day where three cheerful news stories would not go amiss.

The Room of Glasgow are distinctive for reasons including the sizes of the largest games that they offer; their Mansion Room game is designed for teams of 8 to 16 (though there may be some wiggle room) and their Party Room for teams of 10 to 16. Throughout December, there are a number of promotions being launched “by the resident elves”, notably a discount code available for those playing up to December 20th. The most delightful initiative is this one; as discussed on Facebook: “On the 16th of December, we will be hosting a Charity Day. We are offering 3 Party Room games for free for groups of disadvantaged children (from an orphanage, care home, or from poor families). We would like to give the gift of fun to these kids for Christmas, the way we can. We want to give back to the community, and thought it would be great to surprise kids with some caring and fun.” How kind! Exit Games UK commends the site on this thoughtful – and original! – gesture.

Breakout Manchester have launched a second site within the city centre, on the High Street near the Arndale shopping complex. (It’s about eight minutes’ walk from their first location, which remains open.) The new location will feature another John Monroe’s Detective Office, with a new room entitled Vacancy opening tomorrow – “Exhausted after a long journey, you place your bag down on the freshly made bed, ready to relax. Suddenly, an ominous sixty minute countdown begins. No matter what you try, the door will not open. Welcome to Crimson Lake Motel. You check in, but you NEVER check out…” – and a horror-themed Facility X room for players aged 16+ opening soon. “You arrive at an unknown location for a once in a lifetime opportunity; a conference held by the critically acclaimed, Dr. Andrews. His work is widely known throughout the research circles, but he has remained hidden in the shadows for years. What you don’t know, is that Dr. Andrews has gone mad, creating a string of tests that have gone disastrously wrong. He has brought you here for his final experiment.” A fourth room on the site is promised for January, and that’s not all; this new location is a big old space and there may very well be more to come.

Jackie from Locked In Edinburgh got in touch to enthuse about their second room. “Our theme has stemmed from having Pickering’s Gin Distillery sited directly below our escape rooms.” Exit Games UK loves games with local flavour, no pun intended, so the localism here is hard to beat. “The distillery reported a breakin which is thought to be an inside job. Which employee is plotting the distillery downfall and to where are Pickerings planning to move their gin stock for safe keeping? ((…)) A tour of the distillery can be incorporated, although probably best after players escape as the tour includes gin samples which may cloud people’s thinking heads!

Here’s a bonus cheerful news item, not related to exit games: while the shortest day of the year doesn’t happen for nearly another week, we’ve already reached the point in the year where the sun is starting to set later and later. Indeed, the UK is at a point in the year where both sunrise and sunset are getting later in the day, and which one is moving more quickly determines whether the day is lengthening or shortening. Take it as a sign that we’re already making it through the winter!

Now open in Manchester: Tick Tock Unlock

"Tick Tock Unlock" logoIt seems to be a law that when a new exit game opens in central Manchester, it must be almost exactly half a mile from another exit game that exists. Not half a mile from every other exit game in central Manchester, as that would first have required central Manchester to be tetrahedral, then this new one would require it to be… ((sound effect: searches)) pentatopal, apparently. Such existence in higher dimensions sounds like one of the plotlines from Exit Strategy, but that’s not important right now.

Just to the west of Salford Central railway station, about half a mile or so away from two other games, Tick Tock Unlock opened in (technically, Greater) Manchester on October 15th. In fact, the site is located within an arch of a railway viaduct leading to the station; it is the fourth site within the Tick Tock Unlock brand, and the second to be set in just such a railway arch. The site currently hosts a single room, which has a 60-minute time limit and is designed for teams of three (£16/player, £48 total) to six (£14/player, £84 total). The game itself is a new one for the brand, entitled Project Pandora. Sounds hopeful – but maybe wisest not to open any boxes while you’re in there. No, wait, that’s probably not how it works.

You have come far, you and your team of survivors. Now here you are, where it all started, where it could have ended. Where it will end – if only you are brave enough, if only you are clever enough to put the pieces together of Doctor Maria’s final work.

Yet nothing is ever easy, as you have no doubt discovered on your journey to this almost forgotten laboratory, and the lab itself will be no different – for there with you will be the final test-subject, its chains weakened by the unrelenting strength of the living dead.

Early team photos have the teams posting while carrying prop knives, cleavers and the like. Fingers crossed that you don’t end up needing to use them on the final test subject!

Coming soon to Manchester: Trapped Up North

Trapped Up North logoThe tendency seems to be that an increasing proportion of new locations are launching at the start of the month so it’s going to be a busy few days and this site is a little behind. One step at a time.

Trapped Up North is a brand new exit game opening tomorrow, Saturday 1st August, with an intial run announced up to and including Wednesday 23rd December. The site is being run at the Great Northern Warehouse in Manchester, a short walk from the Deansgate Metrolink station and Manchester Central (which will always be the G-Mex at heart). Coincidentally, it’s a very similar location to the one where Breakout Manchester‘s two Classified rooms are still running for another week, but there’s no connection; Trapped Up North is run by a different company who will be running a walk-through horror attraction called House of the Dead in October.

Trapped Up North will offer two rooms to begin with and add a third later in the month. All three have 60-minute time limits and are available for teams of three to six, aged 12 and up, though parental discretion is advised for those aged under 15. As is often the case, the site will open six days a week, taking a one-day weekend on Mondays.

The Jigsaw room concerns a grotesque “purity” test of the same name within a makeshift torture chamber in an abandoned mill, set by a serial killer known as The Judge. “If The Judge’s victims were pure, they would pass the test and escape but if they were not, they would die a horrible death at his evil hands. Of all those who took the Jigsaw test, there are no known survivors.” As an exit game, hopefully the survival rate will be at least a little higher.

The Quarantine room has a biological warfare theme. A virus was developed to make enemy forces turn on themselves; this virus has escaped its cryogenic storage and possibly even the compound where it was created. “There is an antidote but it is lost. You are required to enter the contamination zone, locate the antidote and retrieve it so that medical staff and scientists can stop the spread of the deadly virus. If you do not make it within the allocated time, there is a 90% chance that you will have already been infected. In response, you too will be sealed in!

The Cabin Fever room, launched later in the month, is set on a camping trip that has gone badly, badly wrong. One of your friends has been taken hostage by crazy bloodthirsty locals; worse still, they’re the only driver and have the keys to the car. “Determined to find your friend and after walking for almost a full day you come across a dilapidated cabin buried deep within the swamp. Is this where your friend is being held captive? You watch the cabin for a while and it appears that there is no one there. You must enter the cabin and find out what has happened to your friend and retrieve the car keys to escape. It’s getting dark and you know that the crazies will be hunting soon!

The attraction was previewed by the Manchester Evening News; a follow-up article has a number of pictures, and a tantalising hint. “Trapped Up North is not the first game of its kind to come to Manchester, but it does have a twist which others in the city don’t. But we are not going to tell you what it is here, that would spoil the surprise.

Are you made of sufficiently stern stuff to find out what that twist is for yourself? Only three months until Hallowe’en!

Now open in Manchester: Lockin Escape

Lockin Escape logoThis site has been beaten to the punch – and this site loves it!

As hinted at in the most recent League Table update, while searching TripAdvisor for exit games’ rankings, this site discovered that Manchester has four different exit games open, rather than three. This resolves the issue of “which will be the first city outside London to get to four games” once and for all… and it turns out it may have happened a couple of months earlier than expected.

The fourth site to have opened in Manchester actually turns out to have been The Escape Room, for the third site to have opened is Lockin Escape. Fresh from her detailed, must-read write-up of attending The Escape Room’s recent event – with, notably, a suggestion as to where The Escape Room might be expanding that this site hadn’t seen before – Girl Geek Up North yesterday was the first known site to review the Lockin Escape site.

The site opened in early January, though this was something of a soft launch with the official opening only happening on Sunday. The site is launching with three games: Treasure Hunter, Jail Break and Mission 60. There are all sixty-minute games, designed for teams of three to six.

The site has set some instant best practice in terms of helping people find which of its three games is most appropriate for their team by illustrating each of the three games’ demands not just with a single difficulty rating but with more specific radar charts, illustrating the extent to which the challenge each game poses in five different aspects.

  • The tense Jail Break particularly tests co-operation as “You and your fellow team members have carefully devised an escape plan. To execute the escape plan, you are now disguised as an officer and have gained access into the cell where your targets are held. Your goal is to interact with the secret prisoner and ensure that everyone successfully tunnels out of the cell before the alarms sounds and the guards return“.
     
  • The more difficult Mission 60 has an emphasis on observation when “After weeks of intensive investigation, the security forces remain unable to locate the whereabouts of the President’s son, who has been secretly abducted a month ago. […] As time passed with no word from the kidnappers, the President is becoming increasingly nervous and is losing patience. The President has instructed you and the Hostage Rescue Team to take on this rescue mission and to reveal the plot behind it“.
     
  • The last game, Treasure Hunter, has a high emphasis on mathematical and primarily physical ability. (There may be a clue in the graphic as to what sort of physical challenge is to be faced in the graphic.) “Le Espoir is the world’s most valuable piece of jeweling. This magnificent diamond necklace, unknown to others, is said to have mysterious power that could change the fate of the world. Reliable sources have disclosed that a number of top criminal enterprises have plotted to steal this jewel. Concerned for the future of the country, the State has teamed you up with group of treasure hunting talents to steal this extraordinary necklace before it’s too late. Your mission is to break into the chamber where Le Espoir is and to decode the series of high security systems guarding the jewel to find the greatest treasure in history“.

Which game best suits you? What sort of game are you in the mood for? There’s so much happening in the North-West; the more reports of just how these games compare to the others out there, the merrier, but the first report is extremely promising!

A class act: Classified comes to Breakout Manchester

Breakout Manchester's "Classified"The exit game scene may be even more exciting in the north-west than it is in London right now, what with this week’s exciting launch at The Escape Room Manchester and expansion forthcoming at Clue HQ. Four weeks ago, Breakout Manchester announced that they would be opening their fifth room, which is coming into the closing stages of construction; that’s not all they’re up to!

Today, they made a bigger announcement that they will be launching their sixth and seventh rooms, which are available for booking on Thursdays to Sundays from Saturday 31st January onwards. “For the first time ever at Breakout Manchester, you can race against friends in an identical game room. You can prove once and for all who is the best at breaking out! If you wish to do this please book two sessions on the website that start at the same time. You do not have to have a team to race against, this game can be played as a stand alone game.

Ever fancied yourself as James Bond, Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, Lara Croft, Virginia Hall or Mata Hari? This is your chance to see if you are good enough. The Classified room sees players sitting their final entrance exam to become a secret agent. You must escape from the room to pass the exam. This is Breakout’s most explosive and technologically advanced room yet!

The main Breakout Manchester site is full to the brim with five different games; both of the new games will take place a short distance away from the main venue in what might be considered to be, no pun intended, a breakout space. The rooms are referred to as Classified 1 and Classified 2 and differ only in being coded with (City?) blue and (United?) red graphics respectively on the web site.

All game expansions are exciting, but phrases like “most explosive and technologically advanced room yet” really whet the appetite. This site looks forward to seeing how the competitions work out in practice!

For Schools: the 2015 Alan Turing Cryptography Competition

Black-and-white photo of Alan TuringThis site previously discussed the National Cipher Challenge, held for teams of full-time students under 18 years of age. Happily, the cryptography season is not just one competition long each year; ever since the University of Manchester’s School of Mathematics celebrated the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing in 2012, each year there has been a cryptography competition for school students. The fourth edition, associated with the year 2015, is under way.

Prizes are available, but only for teams consisting of no more than four participants, none of whom can be in Sixth Form, so the limit is year 11 in England and Wales, S4 in Scotland and year 12 in Northern Ireland. There is provision for non-competitive teams to take part without scoring; here there is no restriction on numbers or ages so teams featuring overage students, teachers, parents or members of the general public outside the education system can take part purely for the fun of it.

The competition follows the story of two young cipher sleuths, Mike and Ellie, as they get caught up in an adventure to unravel the Carbon Conundrum. Every week or two weeks a new chapter of the story is released, each with a cryptographic puzzle to solve (…) There are six chapters in total (plus an epilogue to conclude the story). Points can be earned by cracking each code and submitting your answer.” The more quickly you crack each code, the more points you win for each of the six chapters. This year’s story hints at a grapheme theme.

Prizes sponsored by Skyscanner (founded by two former computer scientists from the University of Manchester!) are presented to members of the three top-scoring teams overall, but each chapter also awards additional prizes to the first team to solve it correctly and spot prizes to five correctly-solving teams selected at random.

The really interesting thing is that the top prizes are awarded in person at the annual Alan Turing Cryptography Day. “Schoolchildren who had enjoyed taking part in the online competition were invited to spend an afternoon of code-breaking action in the Alan Turing Building. Nearly 200 children (…) enjoyed a wide range of activities including: interacting with Enigma machine apps running on iPads, a talk entitled `Enigma Variations: Alan Turing and the Enigma Machine’, some maths busking, a Q&A session with the competition organisers, as well as a live cryptography challenge which involved schools having to crack three codes in a one-hour period.

Surely this would be a fantastic opportunity for an exit game (particularly one based in Manchester itself, but really anyone anywhere) to become involved with sponsorship. What would be in it for you? Especially if you can arrange a live challenge, there could be the chance to get the word out to 200 children who have proved themselves not only sufficiently interested in puzzles to enter a cryptography contest but sufficiently talented to do really well at it. On a very slightly cynical note, you might think of this as a way to reach 200 families, or more, who are likely to be right in the middle of your target audience and likely to want to play again and again. Seems like a natural fit!

Coming soon to Manchester: The Escape Room

The Escape RoomSometimes it’s a little difficult to know when new exit games are ready to be discussed on this site; people have their own ideas about just how early “too early” might be. However, when a site postsCome and experience our Escape Room in Manchester!” and links to an update entitled “Escape Room Manchester launch – Not just another escape game!” that starts “We will be opening our doors to the public in Manchester very soon” then it would be excessively conservative to continue to keep schtum.

Previously this site has discussed the world’s leading global brands in exit games and noted Escape Room for featuring open games in three countries and “Coming Soon” games in five more. At that point, the site suggested to expect Escape Room to come to Manchester. Happily, the company has made good on that promise! Another of their Tweets saysWe will be launching all over the UK and in Europe soon!” and the global site suggests three locations coming soon in the UK, one of which is in a city absolutely begging to be served and an extremely promising market. Manchester first, though.

And what a centre it is planned to be! The web site refers to the business both by name and by URL as The Escape Room, thus so shall this site. (Hopefully this will help avoid any confusion with the popular and successful Escape Rooms, plural, of London.) Distinctively, the web site suggests there will be five different games on offer, which will make it the number one site in the country in terms of the largest number of different games – overtaking the previous number one, also in Manchester. The titles are The Secret Lab, The Mummy Returns, Prison Break, Room 13 and Slaughter House – so, whether your taste is for science, Egypt, the supernatural or crime, there’s a room to suit.

It would be very interesting to learn whether the games are exactly the same as when they are played on the other side of the world, not least because the Manchester rooms are set to have a time limit of 60 minutes, as is usual for UK facilities, whereas other centres set a time limit of 45 minutes. On the other hand, it’s extremely promising that there are so many other games available within the Escape Room fold, suggesting that this site might be able to swap games relatively quickly. However, five different games should keep most people going for quite a while!

Extremely promising; this site looks forward to learning how the games live up to their very considerable promise. This looks like a very valuable addition to what’s available in the UK, let alone what’s available just in Manchester. Booking has not yet opened, let alone the games opening for business; this site looks forward to spreading the good word when this changes. The site has a cute photo of a grumpy-looking skeleton trapped behind bars. Fingers crossed that you escape within an hour and thus avoid the same fate!

All that said, might Manchester not be the first city outside London to get to three open exit games?

Interview with Ed Roberts, proprietor of Breakout Manchester

Breakout Manchester description graphicThis site has previously discussed the Breakout Manchester exit game business, around two months old but already doing excellent business. It’s a joy to be able to feature an interview with Ed Roberts, the man behind the site. The questions asked by Exit Games are tagged with EG and Ed’s responses with ER below. The opinions are a little feisty in places; no bad thing at all, but be clear that they belong to Ed.

  • EG: What’s your background, leading up to the opening of Breakout Manchester?
  • ER: I’m a director in two other business, Awaken Ibiza and Funk Events, so up until opening Breakout I was running those companies. A lot of the skills developed in running these two businesses have been hugely beneficial in launching Breakout Manchester.
     
  • EG: It’s exciting to see your Tweets from time to time suggesting that Breakout Manchester is selling out days in advance. Can you say more about how well things are going for you?
  • ER: Yeah, things are going remarkably well. Another company opened in Manchester about 2 months before we did and I think it’s struggled. So for us to be selling out a few days in advance and weekends a few weeks in advance I’m really happy.
     
  • EG: Your excellent progress is all the more remarkable given that the site has only been open for about two months. What techniques have worked well for you at getting the word out around Manchester?
  • ER: My background is in advertising, marketing and promotion has been hugely beneficial. We use some fairly advanced social media techniques to promote the venue and I have done promotion in Manchester for the past 7 years I know a lot of people and organisation in the city which have been a big help. In addition to that, word of mouth is one of our strongest attribute, and that comes from people having an excellent experience with us and then those people spreading the word.
     
  • EG: Which puzzles, games and other artworks have influenced you most over the years in your designs?
  • ER: I really enjoy action computer games. Games such as Zelda, Dishonoured, The Room and The Room Two. Also TV programmes such as The Cube and The Crystal Maze. I’ve always been a huge fan of puzzles my whole life.
     
  • EG: What lessons has your background in event promotion taught you about offering good customer service?
  • ER: In terms of customers service probably not a huge amount, this is one thing I have learnt a lot of from doing Breakout. Where it has hugely helped is the promotion, marketing and advertising of the rooms and the venue.
     
  • EG: It was fun to read that representatives from first the Daily Sport and later the Bolton News have visited your site. Do you have any other star guests lined up?
  • ER: Not really guest stars but quite a lot of press will be coming through in the next few weeks.
     
  • EG: What does a typical day for you look like?
  • ER: I normally get to the venue around 7am and do around 3 hours on Awaken Ibiza or Funk Events. I then organise the staff for the day and spread my time between running the games, tweaking the games, promoting and advertising the venue. The venue is also incomplete so various DIY and decoration is still in place. To be honest for the past week it’s been non-stop running of games. I normally finish around 9pm.
     
  • EG: What are the most memorable reactions from players that you have witnessed?
  • ER: The other week we had 4 teenagers with behavioural issues in from Manchester Young Lives. They were accompanied by 3 teachers from the centre. They had all previously been expelled from numerous schools. The 4 of them absolutely loved it and were captivated from start to finish. Their teachers said their concentration spans were normally that of minutes and had never seen them working as a team before. Turning four disinterested teenagers into a team of happy, energetic and proud young adults was a very memorable moment. To see them rave about it afterwards really impacted me. A good escape room game is fantastic for all ages and in all situations. This particular example is a great example of this, and is testament to the quality of the room.
     
  • EG: How are your preparations going for adding a third room at your current location?
  • ER: Extremely slow 🙂 It’s the first room I’ve ever created completely by myself so I want to assure it’s as good as possible. It’s called Madchester so revolves around Manchester, its history and culture. Think the Hacienda, Stone Roses, Oasis, Coronation Street and so on. It will be open at the end of July if it kills me! 🙂 I’ve been to a few other sites around the country and with the exception of all the London sites, Leeds and one of the Bristol ones, some of them are very poor and I want to assure that my centre is as good as it possibly can be. If someone has a bad experience of an escape game it will put them off for life which would be such a shame.
     
  • EG: Can you reveal anything about your longer-term plans after that?
  • ER: We have the capacity to open another one maybe two rooms in Manchester so my focus is on that and to create some games which push the boundaries of the industry. I’ve got a lot of ideas of how escape rooms can break out of their current mould and I want to explore that. Why do they have to be an hour long for example? Could a escape room be more story driven? It’s exciting times for the industry as a whole.
     
  • EG: If you could give the readers, escape game players and puzzle fans reading this one piece of advice, what would it be?
  • ER: Play The Room and The Room Two on a tablet. Then come to Breakout 🙂

Thanks so much for that, Ed! Note also that last week, Breakout Manchester posted to their Facebook feed that:

Breakout Manchester is recruiting. We need game organisers, makers and technicians. Part time flexible hours available. Must have good customer service skills. If interested please send your CV to hello@breakoutmanchester.com and the days and hours that you are available to work.

Full-time and part-time roles are available, so as well as there being a good opportunity to play the site’s games, perhaps there’s a good opportunity for the right people to be involved from the other side as well!