There is often a plethora of choices when it comes to narrowing down which escape room to play. Although there are also often themes we see again and again; Egyptian Tomb, Prison Break, Pirate Ship, Bank Robbery etc. And, whilst these can be fun, quite often the best escape rooms have a unique theme that we’ve never played before.
So, the TimeTrap team has had great fun pondering ideas for themes we’d love to play and here is our list of the top 10 – part 1 of 2:
Secondhand Bookshop
Libraries make a regular appearance in escape rooms due their nature of holding important and sometimes secret texts. They make a great backdrop for setting up a story, but what about second-hand bookshops? Whilst not as grand, second-hand bookshops hold a lot of charm in their mountains of well-loved books, and unexpected oddities.
In this scenario, you could stumble across a long forgotten diary someone had once donated and find yourself falling into their world. The experience could take you through the different decades of their life and there could be mystery, drama and even be a long-lost romance to come across. The possibilities with this concept are endless, and to top it off, you can include the added pressure of making it out of the diary and back to the shop before you get stuck forever!
Battle of the Bands
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to play a versus game then you know how they can add another level of competitiveness to the puzzling. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many about but we’ve come up with an idea for one that we’d love to play!
It’s the famous Battle of the Bands competition and two rival teams are about to go head-to-head to win the trophy. All they need are their trusty instruments but… oh no! They’ve been locked safety away by the managers who are stuck in traffic with no phone signal! Looks like it’s down to the team members to work out how to unlock the instruments and make it to the stage before the other band.
Instantly, Scott Pilgrim Versus the World comes to mind for the room’s aesthetic, as you could take advantage of the comic book style and neon pops of colour. The two bands could even have different music genres ascribed to them which dictate the styles of the rooms.
Crash Landing
From Star Wars to Interstellar, space is a popular backdrop for lots of media, from films, to games, to books. However, in the escape room world there isn’t as much variation as you might think – space-themed games often take place solely on a spaceship. So, to remedy that, how about an escape room where you have crash landed on an unknown planet with the mission to find the missing pieces of your ship strew across the surface? Your suits only have enough oxygen for one hour so you need to get the ship functional again and return on board within that time!
As we have a huge amount still to learn about space, there is a lot of creative freedom when it comes to creating the sort of planet the team lands on. Whether a technological haven takes your fancy, or a prospering amazon – the possibilities of this are completely infinite and, let’s face it, who doesn’t want to be the embodiment of Buzz Lightyear.
Coraline
Books and films can offer great inspiration for escape rooms but it can be tricky and costly to obtain the rights to use the creation. But if we imagine that copyright and intellectual property are no barrier, we’d specifically love to play a Coraline theme.
Although quite a niche choice, it would add some more substance to the standard creepy game. It could be a thriller theme in which there’s a race to save the ghost children’s souls from the otherworld. Teams could travel through the rainbow bridge to visit Other Mother’s house where everything is dark and eerie. You could go for a monotone aesthetic with pops of colour like blue or yellow, just like the film, to get teams completely immersed into the world of Coraline.
Dog’s Perspective
It may be a man’s world, but if we could choose, we know what everyone would like it to be – a dog’s world. Escape room themes tend to revolve around human issues but what about man’s best friend? Imagine a world where everything is oversized because you’ve shrunk down to pet size in order to help out a doggo pal whose owner has disappeared.
The design for this room has so much fun potential from gigantic doggy doors, puzzles based on frisbees and sticks, and exploring the different senses experienced by dogs. It would be perfect, not just for dog lovers, but also for those who enjoy an innocent storyline as opposed to the doom and gloom, disaster and end of the world-themed escape rooms.
That concludes part 1 of the our ‘Top 10 Escape Room Themes We’d Love to Play’ blog series. Keep an eye out for part 2 and let us know what escape room themes you’d love to play by commenting on our socials!
