Online or Virtual Escape Rooms (and their different forms)

 

Hi everyone

Now that I am finally getting around to writing up reviews of the various online escape rooms that I have tried out over the past 6 months or so, I thought it might be useful to post a short note about the different types of online escape rooms. 

Whilst online or "virtual" escape rooms come in all different shapes and sizes, they seem to fall into 3 main categories:

• Non Live - these are non-live experiences (ie you play at your own pace and there is no live game master/avatar - these are typically point and click);

• Live Avatar - these are live games where a real game master acts as your avatar (ie typically, the game master attaches a camera to his/her head and acts as players' eyes and hands in a real world escape room via a video link, typically over zoom); and 

• Live Experience - these games come in different forms, but involve a live game master via a video link but not in a real world physical room (ie the game master does not act as your avatar).

There are so many online escape rooms available now that the above categories might no longer be 100% accurate for all games and there are some that are a blend of 2 of the above categories.  However, for the purposes of this blog, I will use the above short-cuts as a summary of the type of experience in each of my reviews.  

A really useful website for finding the right online room for your group is Live Video Escape Rooms, which you can check out here.  They adopt the same type of classification of online rooms that I have outlined above. 

Thanks

Scott