Escape, As A Team!

Peter Van de Voorde

It's been a couple of months, but I'm finally back with another gaming post!

Here are my previous ones about Dixit and Pandemic.

So, how many of you have done an escape room as a team?

I believe it can be a great way to figure out and analyze team dynamics (who's the natural leader, who's keeping quiet, who's pushing their opinion to hard, who isn't being listened too, and so much more).

But while going out and doing an actual escape room is awesome, it can also be expensive and time consuming.

That's why I wanted to introduce this group to the Exit series of games. These are escape games in a box you can just play wherever you are.

They give you the same team insights as full immersive escape rooms but without the cost in time and money.

I've played a ton of these and have been frustrated (in a good way) by a lot of them.

Even though they seem small and easy they are actually pretty well put together and fun to explore together.

And if you want a true team "Building" exercise I can recommend the Escape Puzzle series from Ravensburger. These are puzzles that turn into an escape room once you've completed them. Fun to build and fun to play.

If you want to turn this into a full on learning exercise for the team you could also record the entire game play and go over it together afterwards to see how the team dynamics play out. I would recommend doing this together with a coach or moderator so you can all come together and learn as a team.

Have you ever tried an escape game (or puzzle) with your team? How did it turn out?
Did you notice the team dynamics at play? And did this knowledge help you in the future?

Let me know in the comments!

Dániel Ballabás - catworkx

I love escape rooms as a team exercise (and I'm also heavily into board games), but for me, these small box "escape puzzles" fell flat. Tried the Pharaoh's Tomb from the Kosmos line, and a few others by other publishers.

My main problem with them was that they are anti-teamwork in the sense that the puzzle is usually going on in one track (vs in good escape rooms, you can spread out, try stuff with the physical objects, etc.), and since the components are small to fit in these small boxes, only one person can effectively read them, access the information, work on their clues. I admit I've yet to try the ones that come in Ticket to Ride box sizes, maybe those solved this issue. So for this reason, our sessions usually turned more into a reading exercise, where one person just read out the clues - but we all ended up asking for the card to read - and usually running out of time because of "not accessible UI"  

For a similar puzzle-solving-in-a-box feeling, but for better options for teamwork, I recommend the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series, where, after an intro readout, you can even start to work simultaneously. 

PS: Please keep up this amazing series!