It has been over two months since we finished our pop-up game in Great Expectations Hotel and Bar on London Street, and since then we have been running team building events for corporate clients in lots of different places around the South East, as well as working towards securing our permanent home in Central Reading. Behind the scenes we have also been tweaking our current games and puzzles, attending exhibitions and the Escape Game Owners ‘Unconference’ in London.
One of the benefits of touring games to several different locations is the feedback we have gotten from such a range of people, both through observation and talking with customers. This has allowed us to continually refine our games as well as adapt the storylines – something that has been a lot easier with pop-up games than if we had set up permanently to start with.
The 2016 Reading Year of Culture created a sense of pride in Reading that we hadn’t seen before. Events such as the ArtAngel Reading Prison Exhibition and the massively well-received Henry I play by Reading Between the Lines Theatre Company towards the end of the year revealed a clear interest in the history of Reading from its people. With this in mind, we want to play our part in continuing to provide people with a way to immerse themselves in the history of the town. Obviously at our heart we are an escape game, but we want to add a local connection to our games, so that players will leave not only saying ‘that was amazing!’ but also ‘I didn’t know Reading had so much history!’ Basing games on real life experiences also aids in the creation of the environment and unfolding story and only adds to the immersion for the players.
Our mission has always been to take people back in time and ‘Rewrite History with you as the Hero’. Our first pop up game took players back to the 1400’s and a Medieval town ruled over by an evil sorcerer. As much as we loved this game (and clearly others did, with it getting good publicity from both GetReading and BBC Berkshire) we are sprucing it up with an injection of Reading history and it will now be set 300 years earlier around the reign of King Henry I. That’s all we can tell you for now, but check back for updates as we release the storyline to this refreshed game very soon…
