Entertainment is a crucial aspect of human life. We rely on various recreational media to flare up our reality with eventful activities and have fun. From the beginning of our evolution, we have found puzzles and challenges that persuade us to think out of the box as engaging and stress relieving.
Considering the logic of thinking, the urge to challenge ourselves for survival and the need to escape from our mundane routine, games that centered on these themes started dropping in the market. And no sooner, we had escape games based on escape the game video games that relied on us to solve different puzzles and utilize our thinking skills to break out of the room we were willingly locked into.
With the advancement of technology, these live-action escape games took the opportunity to expand their creativity domain by including different tech and implementing gadgets to create immersive and captivating theme rooms with a gripping story line and avatars to play. But it becomes challenging to feature gadgets and technical devices for designing escape rooms as the cost rises significantly and there are too many objects and concepts to handle at once.
Luckily, the years 2020-21 have introduced us to improved and more affordable versions of augmented and virtual reality that can also be used to develop an escape room. With systematic VR concepts on the rise now, you can also diversify your escape room and boost the customer experience in both offline and online modes.
What is VR Technology? How can it benefit the escape room industry?
Virtual reality is a kind of simulated experience generated via computers and AI software. The environment created can be wholly different from our real-life or may have similar aspects and matching backgrounds. This makes the users feel as if this modeled environment is believably real and happening around them; devices like AR helmets and headsets are used to fully experience the immersive effects.
You can utilize VR in many dimensions of your escape room for creating surrealistic and unique effects for engaging the audience. It has also been stated that the visual impressions formed in virtual format help people better retain the minute details. So, if VR is implemented in escape room games, there’s a higher chance that your clients will feel more engaged in the escape game and find it easy to focus on the details and hidden clues. It will attract more customers to your business and benefit your sales.
Now that we understand the importance of VR in the tech-fueled games and entertainment sector, let us look at the points below that explain how escape rooms can be developed using VR technology:
1. Adding a game tutorial at the beginning
Once a team books your escape room and is ready to begin, including a small game tutorial (like a trailer) before the start will help your audience get a good idea of the gameplay. It will help increase their curiosity regarding the narrative story lore once they go inside the puzzle room.
2. Focusing on the background for a perfect panorama game setting
Virtual reality is a deal maker when it comes to designing the backgrounds and special effects for your escape room. You can utilize a variety of theme options like space exploration, a haunted house, a mysterious castle, a witch’s lair, underwater horror, etc. By focusing on the ground using VR, you can create beautiful and immersive effects that will attract and engage all of your clients in the escape room.
3. Changing the pacing after a level is cleared
Usually, escape rooms are designed with multiple difficulty levels. So, once a team completes a level, have devices that will change the pacing for the next game level. It will maintain the thrill and excitement amongst the players and give them room to enjoy every aspect of the puzzle game.
4. Providing the players with small clues as awards after they complete a challenge
Human psychology is based on the rewarding system. Whenever we accomplish something and get awarded for it, we strive to achieve bigger results the next time. You can combine this principle with VR technologies and create immersive effects for gifting the team with a small hint or clue once they solve a tricky puzzle. And a small word of appraisal like, “You did that!” or “Congratulations for getting this far!” flashed will also cheer them up and make them happy.
5. Using virtual characters to answer doubts in between the game
The goal of escape rooms is to help people escape their daily reality routine and embrace something new and unique. And it will get spoiled if you send one of your staff or answer the players’ doubt yourself, for the mysterious effect will fall off temporarily. To get rid of it, you can use VR to create a fictional character that pops up whenever someone is stuck and is asking for help in the game.
6. Adding secret passages that contain answer riddles
Secret passages are always fun. So if you designed some of them to appear once a team finished, say stage B, a secret passage or a hidden door could appear that could contain the answer or hint to the riddles that one will find on stage C. It will set a narrative chronicle and will amplify your escape room’s gaming experience.
7. Creating different levels of difficulty that are beatable
Another aspect that you can add to your escape room using VR technology is beatable opponents at different stages. For example, if the players arrange puzzle A, one cursed doll of the evil witch is defeated, and she gets weaker. Small opponents like these make your escape room game more adventurous and exciting to play. The audience won’t forget this experience even after they leave your place.
8. Introduction of an artificial opponent
Defeating the final big baddie is the ultimate victory goal when it comes to fictional games. You can create one such artificial villain who can be defeated after the team in the escape room finds the right answer to complete the challenge or solve the final riddle. Conquering a powerful foe and getting out victorious will leave a lasting impression on your customers. And they will always want to revisit your company to enjoy its amazing and interesting puzzles and game lore.
VR in online escape rooms
Due to the pandemic and its subsequent effects like social distancing, many people may not get to enjoy the physical details and beauty of an escape room. But virtual escape rooms are there for the rescue. You can add a little more detailing and focus on the background and puzzle levels of your online escape room games and hide clues in the small details of the riddle room.
It will give people an opportunity to enjoy the fully immersive and realistic effects of the escape room game even at home (using good VR headsets or other conducting devices). Don’t let the pandemic ruin your creativity. You can use VR technology in several ways to design and develop unique and adventurous online escape rooms so that everyone can have fun while enjoying them with their friends and families.
Conclusion
Not everything is flawless. VR has its own set of disadvantages that may hamper the fun time of your customers if you don’t implement it properly. But, by accurately positioning the VR controllers and adjusters in your escape room, you can execute a perfect game setting for the players to enjoy and avoid falling into creating messy and uneasy settings. VR technology fashions your escape rooms into more interesting and visually appealing game events, and though it is still a nascent idea, there are many things left to learn and explore in this field.
Author Bio: Aniya more is one of the brightest content writer at https://breakout.in/. She is a passionate writer who loves to read books and explore different escape rooms. With a great work ethic, she spends most of her time researching and reading. When she is not working, she likes to relax with a cup of coffee and enjoy watching her favorite tv show or walking her dog peanut. You can find her on LinkedIn.