Escape Room Conference - Game On 2025

Opening VR Escape was all about getting out of a rut. Post COVID, disillusioned with the printing industry I'd been part of for a couple of decades… bored. It was about getting out of my comfort zone.

I'd played a lot of VR, and a dozen or so escape rooms, but the escape room industry was new to me.

Jump forward two years and I find myself in Canterbury… waiting to meet up with some strangers to play a couple of escape rooms. One arrived from Perth at 6am. Another coming in from North Carolina is held up, and I belt to the station to meet her late train. Before we know it the three of us and a guy from Reading are in a great little escape room inside a medieval tower.

A little later we're joined by a Londoner and a guy from just outside Vienna. A further fourteen countries are represented at the Game On 2025 conference. So I find myself among escape room owners, designers, marketers, and more from all over the world. Me! One small VR escape room… talk about out of my comfort zone.

The attendees of Game On 2025

The conference was an absolute blast. The escape room industry attracts such a nice crowd! Obviously there were owners, game designers, press, and folks that supply the industry, but the mix was great. So many creative types, so many business types… and just occasionally, those things come together in one person… albeit probably not as often as they could.

There were people whose incredible games I’ve played - like Lewis and Mica from The Escapement (Margate) and the brains behind the revamped Canterbury Tales Experience. Their Atlantis room was an absolute triumph, and has now moved to the USA. Other great game designers were there too… (I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve not played all of their games!) An obvious shout out to David from Bewilderbox and his Portaclue - an escape room build inside… well, you can guess. David Goodman’s talk on why the term “escape room” should be burned to the ground was excellent. David owns Hounds. The south coast was definitely well represented with Phil Harris of Pier Pressure talking about developing into supplying and fitting escape rooms and props. While you might ask yourself - why is that interesting to a VR Escape room owner? The answer is that nearly everything i listened to and learned at the conference was equally valid in our empty room. The bits that weren’t relevant were still really interesting to a nosey old bugger like me!

Now I went to that conference with one thing in mind. Do I add a second play space in my building. Do i open up the facility to run two simultaneous games, thus accommodating groups of 12 rather than just 6. A second space. A space that could be a viewing room or a breakout room. I wanted to know what had happened to people’s financials when they opened a second space. The issue of course, is that nearly everyone at the conference, if they had more than one room, had two different rooms. Players could come back twice, never to be seen again. I would have two copies of eleven rooms. Players come back to VR Escape way more than twice. (Thank you for doing that!) There wasn’t a direct comparison I could draw on. (There were exceptions. The fantastic ClueQuest near Kings Cross have several copies of the same physical rooms in the same building which is an incredible operation.)

(I don’t normally specifically recommend rooms but I’m more than happy to say that if you visit any of the companies I’ve mentioned above, you’ll have a great time.)

Craig discussing the building of outdoor games based on history/geography of places.

Looks like I made the official photo album, here discussing a platform for creating AR based outdoor games/treasure hunts. Very early days but I sort of got the bug for game creation and a very tenuous AR is related to VR link is sufficient that I’m looking into it.

Florian playing Glitch Hunters, puzzling and sightseeing around Canterbury.

Phil Harris and co finding the Glitches

An unexpected highlight for me was a portable physical puzzle game for 25 people. Keeping in mind the experience of people in the room, it was very tricky. It was immediately apparent how it could be used to compliment our VR games in our corporate training days. The two ladies who had brought the game over to demonstrate were fantastic gamesmasters and did a great job marshalling rooms full of know it alls :)

No spoilers but one of the puzzles involves Walkmans. Our delightful host began to explain to me how a tape machine worked… then looked me over and said “..oh, you probably remember these..” The cheek! (I don’t need to remember! I’ve still got mine from 40 years ago!)

So where is VR in the mix?

Well I was very surprised to learn that it isn’t really. Although VR was mentioned as another sort of immersive activity, it was mentioned in the same breath as Axe Throwing, Laser Tag, VR first person shooters, and AR Darts. Acknowledged but otherwise passed over. Sure I got asked about it but mostly because people are kind and it’s a subject they could engage this stranger with so they asked questions. The only real mention of VR was in Steven Davis’ talk on how the BBC is working with its IP in the location based field. In short, free roaming VR escape rooms were completely ignored.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected. But it wasn’t that.

In VR Escape I’ve tried to follow the escape room model. The tech is a useful tool, but it’s not the focus. We don’t use cutting edge equipment. We deliberately avoid complex controls. Every effort is made to make the experience as close to a good real world escape room experience as we can. As yet though it seems we’re not really on the radar of the physical escape room crowd.

Which sets me a target - By Game On 2026 we’ll get VR Escape rooms on the agenda!