The Digital Age Of Escape Rooms

Ever since last year when the Covid hit, the market has experienced a turn of events that forced a lot of businesses to either adapt or go bankrupt, and that decision had to be made in record-breaking time. Office-working sectors were quickly forced to divert their employees to their homes, bars and restaurants started serving clientele on the street, delivery and pre-ordering apps started popping up for pretty much every business that previously served people inside, gyms started doing online classes, everybody had to get creative with their businesses really, really fast or risk going out of business.

So what did escape rooms do about it? While most continued working while allowing a certain amount of people to play at the same time while wearing masks and employees thoroughly disinfecting the space after every group, most started going digital. Which unintentionally have led to the new digital age of escape rooms.

The more the pandemic progresses, the more elaborate and creative the online escape rooms have become. It really goes to show how adaptive people are and how creative one can get with saving their business.

Adding to everything else, the online entertainment industry as a whole is experiencing and renaissance it never saw coming - from online gym lessons, through Zoom painting classes, to live video concerts! It’s not like those things didn’t exist before, but now, due to the Covid restrictions and lockdowns varying from country to country, these things have become increasingly popular.

And yes, while online escape rooms will never replace the real life experience, they are produced by the same people who have done the real life versions, and as we’ve mentioned many times before now - it’s very exciting to see what these brilliant creators’ minds are capable of when given the vast and unlimited freedom of virtual reality. Taking all of that into account, the cherry on top of the sundae would be that you can play in escape rooms that are literally on the other side of the globe from you - something that is very difficult to do with real life escape rooms. I know I’ve been very curious to play in some escape rooms in the US, Canada and even Russia, but I’ve never gotten the chance to, however now with the increasing digitalization of the industry - I can just go on their websites and play their online escape rooms! Agreed, it’s not like the real thing, but it’s the next best thing, considering how hard it is to reach the actual real life escape rooms - you get to experience a piece of work that the genius brains of these rooms have done with the same passion and dedication that they put in each one of their real life rooms!

It’s interesting to think about where these technologies can take us in the future and how the industry will progress - of course all that depending mainly on the pandemic. Even not taking the Covid crisis into account (which is hard, I know, but bare with me here), people are experiencing a decentralization from the cities as companies, schools and universities are seeing that everybody can actually do their job through a laptop, if needs be. What does that mean for people? Well, I personally don’t know anybody that is put in home office and not ran off to somewhere out of town to live in nature a little bit. Society is starting to see that when utilized, the technologies are giving people the freedom to be where they actually want to be.

Even post pandemic this trend is most likely going to continue, so the best option for escape rooms in the long term plan is to upkeep their digital escape rooms, if not develop more for their players. A virtual escape room costs relatively less than building an actual, physical escape room (of course depending on what you want developed), but it’s easier to upkeep and guarantees that the pandemic won’t be able to disrupt its business whatsoever.

I personally am excited to see what the future holds for the escape room industry and what could be developed further in the future.

We are also looking forward to expanding our own store even further, we are releasing new products every week. We have already released 5 new products in January alone!

Want to check out our latest arrivals? Click Here