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Happy Escape Industry News Day! February is here! This month comes hot off the presses of World Puzzle Day (January 29th), and Valentine's Day is just around the corner. It's also pre-Enigmarch time, if you're in the puzzle design space and want to try your hand at designing a few with some interesting prompts. Elsewhere in escape room news, the REAction Award and ESCAPETHEROOMer's Bullseye Awards were recently announced. Similarly, dates (and location!) for the Spanish Escape Room Awards Gala were announced (which I'm amused to find out starts about 30 minutes before a flight I had booked to that very city lands, will I make it in time? I doubt it but we shall see). The ER Champ stress test and qualifiers have also been set. And as always, the newsletter features new room openings and interesting escape room news stories I spotted this month. As always, we can't make this newsletter without super helpful folk like yourself sharing things they saw, or rooms near them that opened, so please do feel free to send anything my way no matter how big or small! And with that, I'll leave you with a recent XKCD comic which was shared by designer Brett Kuehner in the Escape Room Discord: |
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Questy lets you add outdoor games and venue collaborations without staff or maintenance overhead. It’s a smart way to capture sunny-day demand, attract new audiences, and generate extra revenue, often paying for itself in months. And if time is the real challenge, the Questy design team can build the game for you. |
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Congratulations to the REAction Award Winners! For this, the second annual REAction Awards, there are 5 winners across 4 categories. This initiative by Room Escape Artist celebrates taking action to make the escape room world more vibrant, but the categories of the awards will vary from year to year. |
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ESCAPETHEROOMers have published the Bullseye Awards for 2025 Celebrating escape rooms, immersive experiences, tabletop games and more, the ESCAPETHEROOMers reviewer team have compiled their list of top experiences in 2025. |
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The Nazotoki Market and the brilliance of Japanese Puzzle Culture Whilst not strictly about escape rooms, I really enjoyed this article from Matthew Stein about the Japanese inventice puzzle scene and the Nazotoki market. We don't usually report on non-English language escape room news (mainly because of my personal failings of not speaking all the languages in the world yet haha), but I'm endlessly fascinated by the Japanese market. This article gives a good insight into it. |
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• The Immersive Experience Awards has launched and has a category for escape rooms and puzzle experiences.
• ER Champ has announced the dates of it's stress test as May 30th, and Qualifications at June 20th.
• The newest issue of ERA (Escape Rooms Australia) Mag is out now.
• Writer Richard Burns has published two escape room design articles on Room Escape Artist this month, one on Environmental Effects, and one on Escape Rooms' Souls.
• The Spanish Escape Room Awards have announced they'll take place in Barcelona on April 12th this year. At the time of writing tickets are not yet available, but you can read more here.
• In other "Spain" news, Room Escape Artist have updated their Madrid Guide.
• RECON is looking for sponsorship, find out more here. Not quite an escape room but we think you'll be interested in...
• EnigMarch is back next month! In the build-up they've started a series called Puzzle Design Academy. In the first, Ryan Veeder describes how to create a word transformation puzzle.
• SCRAP, creators of many notable escape rooms, have brought a HUNTERxHUNTER immersive experience to Los Angeles.
• The winners of the annual Thinky Awards were announced here.
• The winners of the Draknek New Voices Puzzle Awards were also announced here.
• ...And in the same general ecosystem of the two above, Thinky Third Thursday has published it's GOTYs. I'm a contributor, so you can see the games I considered the best of the best this year here too.
• Here's a look at some of the puzzles at PAX Unplugged recently.
• The Taskmaster Escape Room (tabletop game, that is) is launching next month. I normally list the following in "Other News" but I think they deserve their own spaces: Challenge Arcades Monthly Update
Thinky Third Thursday |
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📆 Upcoming Dates for your Diary |
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🇺🇸 4Dreams has opened a new site with 2 rooms in Bellevue, WA.
Boxed In Escape Rooms has opened a new location with one room, Frozen Tundra Task Force, in St. Louis, MO.
Captured LV has opened a new room, The Whimsical Wizard's Workshop in Allentown, PA.
Cloud Escape has opened a new experience, 49 Boxes, in Anaheim, CA.
Doldricks has opened a new room, Galactic Beef, in Kissimmee, FL.
Escapology will be running a pop-up escape room, The MCCoBeauty Heist later this month in Raleigh Hills, OR.
Mastermind has opened a new room, The Missing Explorer, in Little Rock, AK.
Off-Centre Escape has opened a new room, Legend of the Leprechaun, in Easton, PA.
RI Riddle Room has opened a new room, Monster in the Museum, in Warwick, RI.
SCRAP have opened a HUNTERxHUNTER immersive experience in Los Angeles, CA.
Sure Lock is opening a new room, Polybius Lives, this month in Seattle, WA.
The Escape Ventures has opened a new room, Haunted Harbour, in Winter Garden, FL. 🇨🇦 No new openings spotted this month. Know of one? Let us know! 🇬🇧/🇮🇪 South England Enigma Escapes has opened a new site with two rooms in Wells.
Escape3600 has opened a new room, Jurassic Island, in Maidenhead.
House of Frankenstein has opened a new room, The Monster’s Bride, in Bath.
Locked In A Room has opened a new room, Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Way Out, in Exeter.
Room Lockdown has opened a new room, Bootlegger’s Secret, in Hornchurch.
Pier Pressure has opened a new room, Clue Company, in Preston Manor. Midlands Alderford Escape Islands has opened three new rooms in Whitchurch.
Break Escape has opened a new room, Robin Hood, in Nottingham.
Courtyard Escapes has opened a new room, Buccaneers Bounty, in Stourbridge.
Forest Mystery has opened a new room, Robin’s Hood Heist, in Newton Burgoland.
Houdini’s has opened a new room, Apocalypse: Shelter 23, in Coventry. North England & Yorkshire Adrenaline Escape has opened a new site with two rooms in Wigan.
Hollym Escape Rooms has opened a new room, The Inheritance – A Battle of Wills, in Withernsea.
Houdini’s has opened a new site with three rooms in Rochdale. Northern Ireland Forbidden Quest has opened a new room, The Collector, in Belfast. 🇦🇺/🇳🇿 Entombed has opened a new room, Cosmic Rescue, in Launceton, TAS.
Escape Reality has opened a new room, Jurassic Island, in Newcastle, NSW.
Escape This Manly has opened a new room, Magic School, in Sydney, NSW.
Elude has opened a new room, Magicians Lair, in Galston, NSW.
Missing Klues has opened a new room, Pharaoh's Tomb, in Canberra, ACT.
Red Lock has opened a new room, Sherlock: A Royal Murder Mystery, in North Lakes, QLD. A shout out to the resources & individuals who were a huge help this month: Escape the Review (UK), ERA Mag (Australia), Rich Bragg (USA). |
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Tweedledee and Tweedledum have two personalities. State 1 and State 2. Tweedledee tells the truth in State 1 and lies in State 2, while Tweedledum lies in State 1 and tells the truth in State 2. One of them said, "I am Tweedledee." What state was he in? |
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