Escape Room Design and Consulting

 I co-designed my first Escape Rooms with Port City Tour Company in 2016 and 2017. The first was based on my noir detective, Dirk Manzman, who was featured in two musicals I wrote. The musicals had four possible endings, on which the audience voted. 

That's me as Dirk in the upper right hand corner.

Since I was new to Escape Room design, with no formal training, I played a single Escape Room. Then I did a ton of research. At that time, Escape Rooms were just beginning their 2.0 phase... the players were immersed in a story. That was very appealing to me, as I had been writing and touring in participatory plays for young audiences and immersive theatre experiences like the whodunnit musicals for 25 years.

The second room was based on Port City's main attraction--all things Golden Age of Piracy! Blackbeard had sunk his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, right off the shore of Beaufort. 

The room was more specifically based on my one-man historical theatre show, The Legend Of Blackbeard, a 90 minute walking tour/performance where I played 7 pirates and a Royal Navy captain.

I also realized that, if an Escape Room had three rooms, it could be laid out like a three-act play or screenplay, and, since there was a 1-hour time limit, it was really a "bomb under the desk" classic thriller situation.

I have designed all of my Escape Rooms using this idea, adding to the theatrical feel by using actors as nonplayer characters and/or audio recordings and pre-recorded phone calls. 

The gamemasters and staff were part of the experience from the moment the players arrived. 

Both of these Escape Rooms were open for several years and received almost all five-star reviews. 

Because of their success, in 2018 I was commissioned to write two articles on designing Escape Rooms as thrillers, for Stage 32 and Creative Screenwriting:

https://www.stage32.com/blog/7-steps-for-writing-escape-room-narratives-and-how-to-find-opportunities-to-write-them-1597

https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/thrill-writing-escape-room-narratives-contained-thrillers/

The Creative Screenwriting article was republished by the International Screenwriters Association in 2021:

https://www.networkisa.org/screenwriting-articles/view/writing-escape-room-narratives-as-contained-thrillers 

After those articles were published, I received an offer to design an Escape Room with a unique challenge: rather than a dedicated space, it had to be designed for quick setup and takedown in a bed and breakfast cottage in Dumfries and Galloway Scotland that catered to tabletop gamers. 

This was my first opportunity to not only design and write the story on my own, but to design all of the puzzles (which are always linked directly to the story beats and drive the narrative forward). 

Starting from my belief that the gap in a fictional experience should be as narrow as possible between the Fiction and the Reality, the premise (or inciting incident) was that the guests arrive to find a note that their hosts have been kidnapped by faeries!

This unique Escape Room has gone on to win two awards (regional and national) from the Scottish Tourism Board.

I am currently designing a second room for Arden Holiday Cottage, with a World War I theme. 

I have also consulted for a number of immersive and theatrical production company. I also consulted for Mercedes Benz for one of their international in-house annual competitions. 

In spring of last year, after three years of painstaking design, attention to historical detail with the props and set decoration, and some special effects and true WOW moments, my Mothman '66 Escape Room opened at the World's Only Mothman Museum, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

I have been visiting the town, studying the Mothman phenomena, and appearing at the Mothman Festival and giving lectures and podcast presentations on this subject since 2009. I have also written a stage play and a musical about the subject, which are the basis of a trilogy of novels, the first of which, Mothman was Here, will be published this fall, in time for the Festival. 

https://www.mothmanescaperoom.com/

The Arden and Mothman Escape Rooms are part of my Signature Escape Room Experience brand.

I am due to begin a new Escape Room, with a mobster/vaudeville theme at a historic theatre/performing arts center this spring and I am designing a series of immersive experiences with Escape Room elements for the Centennial of Route 66.

I have begun incorporating elements of magic, other aspects of game design and even VR and AR into my designs. 

I would love to talk with you if you are in search of a designer or consultant for your next Escape Room or immersive experience project.

joeymadiawriter@gmail.com