Working at an Escape Room
08/02/2018 by Josh
Working at an escape room is an interesting experience, since you never know what you might be doing. Since everyone hired has a range of skills, one day you might be working on coding a program to make sure the lights turn on after a puzzle is solved, while another you might be working on the backstory of a room. You could work with cables, making sure they're all the right length and can carry electric currents, or work on cleaning. Sometimes, when a new room is being put together, you might even be tasked with helping to make props, or testing a room's puzzles to make sure they work as intended. Plus there's brainstorming for what all goes into a room, where early on a room's theme can change while it's still in the conceptual stages. There's also claning, brainstorming, and restocking supplies when business is slow.
While I hesitate to call any role more important than any other in this business, I will remark that when one plays the role of game master, their job is essentially to make sure that all the hard work that went into making a room wasn't all for nothing. As a game master, one has to keep track of what the players are doing in the room, check their progress, and make sure they don't break anything. There's also having to supply hints relevan to where they are in the room when they ask for hints. You also have to make sure that they aren't breaking any rules, and to be patient enough to watch people completely misinterpret a clue and to keep oneself calm when they ask for a hint. Just because the solution is obvious to a game master doesn't mean it will be obvious to the players, after all. Then there's the occasional troubleshooting when something breaks in a room, or an important part of a puzzle wound up removed by a previous group. If someone breaks something in the middle of a game, and that something is important to the room, then the game master will either send a coworker in to fix it, or go in and have someone else take over their role.
In short, I would say that working at an Escape Room is a very fulfilling job.