How do you make a virtual escape room?

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? What makes it harder is that it is not a real escape room. All the rooms, puzzles, and twists of the game are there, but nobody knows that you are in a virtual world. You don’t get any clues from a real timer in your room. When you are done with a room, you have to find some way to escape, no matter how impossible it may sound.

It’s a puzzle adventure game where you try to escape a prison from your cell. You won’t be given a lot of time to get out. There are many puzzles and you have to solve them in order to survive. To escape you need to look for clues, write down notes and read maps and transparencies. You can only communicate with other inmates by reading letters and tapping words on the console. Using your brain and/or inventiveness is really important if you want to win.

For us, virtual escape games are almost a natural evolution of the escape game genre, however, the dynamics of interactivity made them a bit different from the traditional escape game. The main difference is that you do not need an actual room. You can make an escape room, just get a flat-screen TV and a set of different phones. You can make it as small or big as you want.

How do you set it up?

The idea for an escape room originates with the book’s author, Marcus Sedgwick. In 1999, he noticed a trend in independent bookstores for people to either purchase a used book or borrow a book, take it home, and then return it to the shop. He observed people driving home from school, apartments, or bars with an open book on their laps. The analogy he made was that if you own a car, it would be the same as you get a car on loan from the dealership.

Start with a 10 meter by 10 meters by 10-meter room. There are so many different rooms and ways of constructing them. Since each room is different it’s extremely interesting to explore the possibilities and make your own. Make your escape room your own by adding your own details. Decide where to hang the map. Give yourself a great escape space with some impressive obstacles and even some hidden room.

If you have ever played a sandbox game, such as Minecraft, the concept of creating rooms for your team to escape in is very familiar. Although real escape rooms have become very popular in recent years, the genre is actually relatively new, so a lot of work has gone into making them as accurate as possible. Virtual Reality makes this process easier and more immersive by adding an extra dimension to the room.

There are many companies that have designed a whole virtual reality room for the clients or the players, and all the objects, the decor, and the layout of the place are based on its theme and an authentic look and feel of the real place. This visual effect stimulates us to involve more in the game.