Puzzle Philosophy

Puzzles are activities that players undertake in an escape room and can range from mathematical problems to solving riddles, to tests of observation or reaction speed and everything in between. Every creator has their own philosophy when it comes to puzzle design and while all of us at Studio Escape bring a different set of ideas, skills and personal tastes, our thinking when it comes to puzzle design is virtually identical.

Here, in no particular order, is a list of some of our thoughts on the matter.

1, The goal should be clear

This is not to say that the answer should be immediately gettable, but rather that players need to understand what it is they are being asked to do. Struggling to work out the solution to a problem is fun; struggling to figure out what the hell you’re even meant to be doing is frustrating.

2. The elements should be used intuitively

Consider this example, a puzzle has players searching for the antidote to a deadly pathogen. Players can expect to be dealing with elements such as test tubes, vials of strange liquid and other lab equipment. We believe that not only should the elements look as realistic as possible, but the way that players interact with these elements should be believable too. 

3, The solution is obvious in retrospect

Let’s say a player is completely stuck on a puzzle. After receiving the answer, we want them to think “of course! I can’t believe I didn’t get it!”. If instead they think “huh? how the hell did you expect me to get that?” it means that we have not done our job correctly.

 4、The process itself is fun

Some puzzles in escape rooms can feel as boring as filing tax returns (even if they do take place in a spaceship or medieval dungeon). No matter how good the presentation, asking players to count more than twenty objects in order to progress is lazy in design and tedious in execution. Escape rooms are not just an escape from a room, they are an escape from daily life and we want our puzzles help players really escape from theirs!

5, They include more than one player

At Studio Escape, we want players to work through everything together and share the satisfaction of completing our experiences as a team. To achieve this goal, we design puzzles either to be more efficient with multiple players, or even physically impossible to complete without teamwork. For example, a particular machine might be designed so that it needs two people to work it, or the elements of a puzzle may be in different rooms and require the eyes of one player and the ears of another to get all the necessary information.

We have been refining our puzzle design for years and we try to ensure that we incorporate all of the above into every single puzzle in every single room we build. It is always exciting when we watch players interact with puzzles for the first time, their reactions can sometimes be unpredictable and surprising, but they are always interesting and always help us improve our future designs.