Why Are Escape Games So Popular

Why are escape games popular? There are plenty of reasons why and we’ll be going over some of them today. It is certainly a growing phenomenon here and in the rest of Europe. Any age can play, whether they be adults or teenagers, or even corporate teams hoping to improve their team building efforts.

So, what is an escape room then?

If you don’t know what an escape room is, then let us tell you more about it. An escape room is a concept so simple you wonder how on earth you didn’t come up with it yourself. It consists of a group of people locked in a room, usually a room with a theme, and then finding their way out in 60 minutes. In that 60 minutes, they’ll have a series of clues, cryptic, puzzles and maps which they use to help them escape. A group is better than one person, because you help each other out – and that’s where the team bit comes in.

Team building activities are popular with corporate firms

It also explains why they’re so popular with corporate firms because they help with team building activities. They help improve critical thinking, problem-solving and lateral thinking. The team must work together, and as a result they communicate better. You also have the benefit of finding out what their skills are so you can utilise them to best effect when you’re back in the office.

Regular visitors as well as corporate teams enjoy escape rooms

For the regular visitor, escape rooms make great birthday presents, or just simple group days out with friends and/or family. Whether you’re celebrating something or you’re just having a good time with friends, an escape room is a great way of loosening up and enjoying yourself. If you’re after a fun day out that really tests your mettle, your cognitive skills and makes you laugh, then an escape room is the perfect answer.

Escape Room London – the best way to celebrate your day off

If you’re looking for fun, excitement and a way of boosting team working then come to Escape London. You’ll find various rooms with a number of different themes, just to crank up the fun and mystery levels. We’re convinced you’ll love it and it won’t be your last visit either. You’ll have such a great time you’ll want to come again, and when you do, you’ll get the same great welcome you had the first-time round. Escape rooms are popular for a reason, so come and find out for yourself. Get in touch and get on down to Escape London.

The Games at Escape London

Today we’re taking a scintillating glimpse into the rooms of the escape world. Each of our rooms is an adventure in itself and it’ll take a certain amount of ingenuity to get out. Do you have what it takes to escape from one of our rooms? Let’s take a look at each one in turn.

The Da Vinci Room – will you break the code and find the Holy Grail?

Think code breaking and symbolism along with association problems when you consider the Da Vinci Room for your escape room quest. This is where you’re a thief trying to get hold of the Holy Grail, do you or the team have what it takes?

Area 51 – there’s a conspiracy…or is there?

Think Roswell and aliens hidden away, could London also be the scene for a similar incident? You’ll have to get yourself down to the basement and find out what’s there, and you don’t know what it is. Are you strong and able enough to reveal a conspiracy, if there is one?

Escape Casino

Sound ultra-glamorous, doesn’t it? But is it? You’ll need the brains to be able fight your way out of this room with puzzles to challenge the cleverest of you. Are you smart enough to escape the casino room?

Escape Rooms, London – all you need in mystery, conspiracy and excitement

So, there you have it, three rooms and three different themes. Each one offers the perfect opportunity to use your skills, brain power and ingenuity to escape. You’ll only have 60 minutes, that’s how it works, and in that time, you’ll learn how to work as a team to solve each puzzle. Go against each other and you’ll be there when the 60 minutes are up, so that means you’ll need to hone your communication skills and your ability to multi-task and work as part of a team. That’s why our escape rooms in London work so well with corporate teams as well as family and friends, because they really test you, not physically, but mentally.

Escape games London

Fancy coming down to see us and trying out one of our escape rooms? If you have any questions about what we’ve talked about today or have any other escape room related questions, why not get in touch by either emailing or calling us, you’ll find our details over on our contact page. We’d love to hear from you.

Escape Room Game Tips

If you decide to come to an escape room, such as our one in London perhaps, then you’ll be wondering as to how you can get out in the 60 minutes without becoming flustered. It takes a certain knack, a skill for staying calm, and a good deal of problem solving and communication skills. However, we’ve decided that we can’t just leave you alone in that room without giving at least one or two tips on how to get out. So, here’s five of our best for getting out of an escape room with sanity intact.

Communication

If you don’t communicate with your team, and act as if you’re all alone in this, then you will still be in that escape room after the 60 minutes is up. Also, don’t all crowd around the same thing, it may be part of a puzzle that’s been spread out around the room and you won’t need to all go to one part of that puzzle in a group.

Don't Let One Person Dominate

There’ll always be one personality that has a louder voice, a person who considers themselves a leader, someone who will think they can solve a puzzle and that they don’t need any help, or perhaps the way they’ve decided to work on the puzzle in order to solve it is completely wrong. Any one person in that group could be in a position to solve the puzzle, even the quiet one, so give everyone a chance.

Think Aloud

Yes, say out loud what you see, it’ll help give you a feel for what the puzzle is and what you need to do in order to solve it. You’re using your eyes and your voice to help connect all of you in the team to work that puzzle out. You’re going to have to think as one instead of as six separate people, because what you don’t want is all of you looking at different things, starting to try and solve different things and failing instead of working together – as a team.

Manage Your Time Well

Always remember the clock because one the time’s up you’ll have lost. Try and allocate a certain amount of time to each puzzle and if you’re struggling remember to ask for a hint or a clue. You’ll have to conserve hints because there are only so many, but don’t use them too late either. Why not try allocating a certain amount of time to each puzzle before you decide you need a hint? That way you’re not wasting valuable time before moving on to the next.

Think Like a Writer and Use All Your Team’s Skills

You’ll have hopefully brought along a team with a varied skill-set, they may be IT experts, or teachers, or may be even an engineer. They’ll all have something useful to contribute, and of course if one or two of you are writers then you’ll have a feel for a story. What’s the story for this escape room? Once you start working out the story, you can then work out how the clues work and then try to solve them effectively.

Escape London – An Escape Room Like No Other

Think you’ve got what it takes to beat one of our escape rooms? Why not book now to take the test? Lock yourself in and then get yourself out, you have 60 minutes, it’s time to get your best team together.

What is an Escape Room?

If you’re thinking of trying out an Escape challenge and you’re unsure as to what it is, then stay here, because we’re going to explain all about it in this week’s post. It’s an exciting way of enjoying time out with friends, or as a bonding exercise for corporate teams. Whether you’re a leader of a new project group or you’re part of a group of friends looking for a great day out, an escape room will provide enough excitement to put you through your paces.

What is an Escape Room?

An escape room is a place where you’re locked in with no means of escape, and the only way out is for you and a group of friends or work colleagues to solve the puzzles left for you to get out.

There are different versions of escape rooms and some with hyper reality features. We’re just going to have a general peek at what you can expect from most of them.

Some general features

Regardless of the features, most escape rooms will be team based with anything up to 12 people taking part. There’s a strong emphasis then on people working together to find a way out, working their way through clues and puzzles. There’s usually a story behind an escape room, you will play a character that has to escape and only your colleagues can help you leave.

There’ll be a theme in tune with the character you are playing. You could be a prisoner in a jail cell, or a hostage in some sort of alien/spacecraft scenario, in which case, the rooms will be decorated in accordance with this theme. Hopefully, the people running the escape room will have left no expense spared and it will be high in production values. It should be an amazing experience and the effort gone into creating it should show in every aspect of the room.

Puzzles

Puzzles will consist of finding hidden objects or filling out a crossword. There could be things you have to match together, and the placing together of physical objects. You’ll need to be able to think quickly and out of your comfort zone, and there’ll be a little creative thinking involved.

There’ll be lots of puzzles around the room for you to solve and eventually all of these puzzles will lead to a final escape. There’ll be a time limit which is usually around 60 minutes.

So, some of the most recognisable features of an escape room are:

• Lock and keys

• A locked door

• Multiple rooms

• Hidden doors

• Puzzles

• A theme.

If you want to take part in an escape room challenge you can join ours here in London, we have some really exciting and challenging escape rooms that are good for teams of up to 6. We can take teams of up to 18 people at a time because we have 3 rooms so if you have a large team, there’s room. You’ll have an hour to find your way out and in this time your team will have to work together and communicate.

Join us and find out whether you’ve got what it takes to get out of the escape room. You may be pleasantly surprised at what you and your team are capable of.

Why are Team Building Activities Important for Your Business?

Team building activities are important to your business for numerous reasons. Reasons which we’re going to be covering today. If up until now you’ve believed that team building exercises are a complete waste of time, then you’re wrong. By investing in your people, you’re investing in your business at the same time, paving the way for a better future with more harmonious working relationships.

Help your team work together rather than against each other

Team building can go a long way in encouraging collaboration where people work with each other rather than against each other. That’s not to say that’s what happening every day in work, but when colleagues don’t have an opportunity to bond with each other, they may feel isolated and unsure of each other.

The skills you pick up are invaluable

Team building activities such as our escape events are a great way of motivating people, getting them to build up skills such as problem solving, planning and communication and avoiding conflict. Although learning how to resolve conflict is also something you can build on in one of our activities.

Communication, connecting, discussion and socialising

We spend a lot of time creating stuff like this because we believe in the power of team building. We believe that they can help foster connections, discussion and help with future work projects. It can also help with their networking abilities and help them to socialise better with colleagues in the future.

Socialising out of working hours can be a positive thing

Yes, people are there to work, however socialising with work colleagues outside of work hours can be the best way of getting more out of them during the day and increasing their productivity. It can help increase morale and help them to solve issues that crop up during the working day.

Escape – a novel way of team building while having fun

Escape for instance is a team building activity where a group of people have to find their way out of a locked room. They may be competing against another team of their own work colleagues in another room. It does get competitive, but that’s a good thing. Competition can increase productivity, and by getting that out in a fun and exciting way, your team are bonding at the same time.

Let them bond, compete and brag a little

Perhaps some of them have never spoken to each other before, now they’ll have an opportunity to communicate and help resolve problems, solve puzzles and enjoy bragging rights if they win. As well as problem solving, communication and conflict resolution, your team can find out where their skills lie, it could foster creativity and innovation by allowing people to think carefully and quickly, their way of a problem.

Also, consider how much more relaxed people feel when they’re around people they feel comfortable with. Once they’ve bonded you’ll find that they’re much more comfortable around their colleagues, and as a result they’ll have a better imagination, and be better able to come up with more innovative ideas.

Communication – a key skill

And yes, as we’ve mentioned, communication is a crucial skill in the workplace and one that team building helps encourage. If you learn to communicate better, you’ll work better, that’s a fact, and we believe that our team building activities are perfectly suited to fostering better communication.

We’ve worked hard to create the perfect team building experience and we believe that Escape is it. We want to help you build a successful team that will help your business succeed in the future, so if you’re looking for the ideal team building exercise, then get in touch with us here at Escape, and let’s help you to create that perfect working environment.

5 Fantastic Team Building Activities

In today’s post, we’ve provided what we think are some of the best team building activities in the country. These are the kind of events where your team can find out more about themselves, each other and bond in a unique atmosphere that isn’t in their usual work environment. These types of team building activities are worth their weight in gold and are becoming supremely popular as corporate events. If you’re looking to develop your team’s skills, and you’re eager for them to bond, then this type of event is perfect for that. Take a look below at our events and pick one that feels right to you.

Scavenger Hunt

In this scavenger hunt, there’s a chosen location for finding a treasure hunt. Your people will be split into teams and they must find the treasure by competing against each other solving all sorts of cryptic clues, taking photos, and collecting all sorts of unusual things. This is a great team building event where they can find out more about each other as well as spend time unwinding outside of a conventional work setting.

Boot Camp

How about a military style boot camp delivered by ex-army and royal navy, a workout that’s been based on actual training practices used by the military? Key skills utilising will be evade and escape tactics, problem solving, combat techniques and skirmishing, and this can help your team to bond and find out their strengths and weaknesses.

Sports Day

This is the type of team building event where communication and teamwork will be encouraged in order to win prizes. Team will compete head to head and compete to win first, second and third. Yes, they’ll learn about competitiveness and how good it feels to win, and you’ll get to see your team’s strong and weak points.

It's a Knockout

A great day where you can spend time bonding and getting to know your fellow work colleagues. You may be too young to remember It’s a Knockout but it’s a competition where you play against each other in teams, and have to take part in all sorts of lively activities where you might get wet or die laughing. It’s definitely something worth considering if you want your team to bond.

Escape London

A unique team building event where your people are locked in a room and have 60 seconds to find a way out. This will be via powers of observation, problem solving and an opportunity for communication and listening. Hopefully, your team will come out of this knowing more about each other, themselves and their skills, and how best to utilise them in the workplace.

We hope you found our post this week on team building activities useful. If you manage a business and you’re looking to encourage bonding within your workforce, these team building activities are the perfect answer. They’ll help foster good communication, problem solving and resolving issues, so it’s definitely something you should explore.

What are the Benefits of Team Building Activities?

There are many benefits to team building activities and we’re going to be discussing just a few of them to convince you of the advantages you could see in your workplace.

Communicate and Collaborate

When your team take part in a team building exercise, they learn how to communicate better and their collaborating skills improve. This is because many team building activities revolve around finding the right result and this can lead to sharpened communications skills where articulating a particular task to another is crucial.

Getting Results. Competition. Winning.

Yes, the team building activities you choose will always involve getting some sort of results from a set of exercises which the whole team have had to take part in. They will know what it feels like to get the right result through working together, they’ll have learnt how good it feels to win, or the bad feeling you get when you lose, and this will all help with creating a sense of competition and how good it feels when you get the right results.

Socialising

Yes, through socialising with each other, your team will have bonded and hopefully, once they’re back in the workplace they’ll work better together. There should be better productivity as a result, as well as increasing morale.

Team Performance

After a strenuous, fun day out with a team building activity, your team should be able to perform better than before. They will have got to know each other’s weaknesses and strengths and this should help them to work together as a strong team.

Break Down Barriers

By working together, communicating and finding a way forward in a team building activity, your staff are breaking down barriers that may have stood in the way of being more creative. This could be because they’re unsure of the team they’re working with. They’ve never met any of the team before, or they’ve never really spoken to each other, perhaps they feel they can’t work with them. However, when they’re thrown together in a team building exercise they have to communicate, articulate their needs, solve problems together and get the right results. This is the template for work practice back at the office.

Improve Problem Solving Skills

We’ve already seen how problem-solving can help them communicate, and this skill can also help in terms of working through any complexities within a project, any issues that seem like they can’t be resolved. When your team build on problem-solving skills, they can be built and practised upon, so when they are faced with problems before getting the desired result, they’ll be able to work through them together – as a team.

Book Your Team Building Activities

So, there are just a few of the benefits of team building activities that we believe are essential in creating a productive, positive team. By helping your team to bond and communicate better, you’ll get the kind of results you want and meet the goals you need to meet. You can book your team in at Escape London today to put their skills to the test.