Planning Your Escape

Never get stuck inside an escape room again, with this strategy guidebook to beating your favorite immersive interactive game—from a well-known game designer and puzzle enthusiast

Chances are you have visited an escape room, whether for a birthday party, a corporate team-building exercise, or as a weekend excursion with your friends. But what does it take to maximize your chances of solving the puzzles, while ensuring everyone has a good time along the way?

Planning Your Escape is the perfect guide to making sure you never get stuck in another escape room again. Game designer extraordinaire Laura Hall has all the best strategies for every room you might encounter, so your team can function like a well-oiled machine. This guide offers:
-A history of puzzles and experiential entertainment, from the 4,000-year-old dexterity puzzles of Mohenjo-daro to the spectacle of immersive theater installations like Secret Cinema, Meow Wolf, and Sleep No More;
-Different types of escape rooms, and solvable examples of the common puzzles they employ;
-Common escape room player personality types, and how best to work with them; and
-Advice for constructing your own escape rooms and puzzle hunts

Bringing in a cast of experts, Planning Your Escape is the must-have strategy book for any escape room enthusiast, puzzle fan, and aspiring experience designer. Get ready to wow your friends and impress your co-workers with your new skills, and never enter a room you can’t get out of again!

Laura Hall is an artist, writer, puzzle-maker, and immersive environment and narrative designer living in Portland, Oregon. Her work focuses on the intersections between art, culture, and technology, especially in gaming. She designs escape the room puzzle games with Meridian Adventure Co. in Portland, Oregon, and is the author of Katamari Damacy for Boss Fight Books. She sits on the boards of the nonprofits Portland Indie Game Squad and the Enthusiasm Collective, a not-for-profit creative coworking space for artists and activists in Portland. She has spoken about escape room games, puzzle design, player behavior, and environmental storytelling at conferences, festivals, and workshops around the world.