Immersive Design @ SoCo Escape Room
As co-founder and creator of SoCo Escape Room, a large part of what I do is to create immersive environments for our participants. In fact, building rooms is the most rewarding part of running this business! My background in immersive and interactive theatre-making is a perfect fit for this industry which, at its best, blends interactivity and story into a seamless, live, and life-sized game playing experience.
What is an escape room? An escape room is a live, immersive, and physical puzzle experience in which participants are locked into a room and must work as a team to solve a series of puzzles and tasks within the room in order to escape within a specified time limit. Our rooms are themed and have a unique storyline that engages you with your environment.
Designing Escape Rooms
In each room that my business partner, Tene` Greenhood, and I co-design, we carefully craft for five specific elements:
Environment
Aside from the basics of puzzle design, you'll see in the images below that each room is a fully developed environment. We design rooms so that props and set that isn't specifically puzzle related can be touched, interacted with and can enhance an individual's experience.
Sound
Soundtrack, like in film, is one of the post important elements to create immersion and atmosphere in our rooms. I edit, compile, and create each and every soundtrack to enhance the mood of each room. Each one is constructed with a tension build to increase the sense of urgency toward the end of the experience. You'll notice that some (The Vault) have interjections from characters throughout.
Story
All of our rooms have a unique, engaging, and sometimes changing storyline that carries through each escape room experience.
We work diligently to ensure that the story makes sense in context and always answer the following question: Why would it makes sense in a particular situation to be locked in a room and need to solve puzzles to escape?
Interactivity
Each room is designed around a set of puzzles that need to be challenging yet solvable in different ways. We design our rooms so that a single experience will have puzzles that require different ways of thinking and parts of the brain; some puzzles can be. solved by a single person, some need a group, some are more physical, while others are intellectual. Curating this aspect of interaction in the room is what ultimately makes it a rewarding experience for guests of all types, ages, backgrounds, and abilities
PHOTOS
SOUND
*Each soundtrack is 60 minutes in length in original form. These samples give a taste, but have spots where they skip so that you can experience different aspects of the soundtrack.
VIDEO
Teasers & Trailers
