The very first room we built was Zombie Bite, and we set out with a goal to do things differently.
We noticed that many escape rooms in NZ lacked a deeper story. Sure, they had themes, but often you'd start in a room thinking, "Wait, where do I start... and what does this have to do with the story?" There were moments like, “Why am I bouncing lasers off mirrors in a haunted house? Why would there even be lasers? Do demons get bored and decide that electronics are a fun pastime... okay I'll look past the fact there are lasers, they are pretty cool... why would lasers cause that creature to come to life... I'm lost... but okay”.
I get it, most people are like, "awesome, lasers, LOVE IT!". But to us it often felt like an average escape room was simply a collection of puzzles that loosely fit the theme without making an effort to add any reasoning for why they should exit. Which for us, took us out of the moment. This vagueness can also make the puzzles seem harder than perhaps they should be—not because they are inherently difficult, but because you find yourself searching for seemingly random items and clues, thinking, “Well, I guess this might go here, 'tap, tap, tap'... nope... try something else... um...” For many, those random puzzles are exactly what they expect from an escape room experience, but for Zombie Bite, we wanted to put the story first. We thought, we can’t be the only ones who want the escape room world to make sense, for it to all fit together, for the puzzles fit the story. We wanted to play in a room that could be treated as a true-to-life scenario, rather than an elaborate scavenger hunt.
We weren’t sure how it would be received, or how the story would be delivered—after all, nothing like it existed, well more accurately, we hadn't played a room like that in NZ. We aimed to create a room—a little world—where you could lose yourself. The challenge should come not from not knowing where to start, but from figuring out how to relate information or items to a lock or puzzle and that stuff should all work as it would in the real world (adjusted to make it actually solvable of course).
In true Escapism style, we wanted to offer something different, take a risk, and hope that by caring deeply about quality, we could create something we thought was awesome—and maybe others would think so too.
Lucky for us it turns out that worked and most players love the room!
Before we considered which puzzles we liked or what gadgets were cool, or even lifted a hammer, we looked at the empty room, which felt perfect for a post-apocalyptic theme—so why not zombies? From there, we crafted a backstory explaining the origins of the zombies and how each room connects to that narrative. Just like any good story, we developed characters with purpose, backstories, and hints about what they did—or didn’t do. We decided to build rooms that the Lethal Organism Variation and Engineering organisation owned, spaces where the characters had worked before the world turned upside-down...
I don’t expect everyone to care about a deep story, Escape Rooms are just entertainment and you can focus on any elements that you most enjoy. However, if you do pay attention to the story, you'll find that Frank is a puzzle loving, building maintenance guy, who is a family man, and maybe ponder that your mate Scott might be the real reason the world got swarmed by flesh-eating undead, was he actually trying to help you? But the story is there if you look for it, and the puzzles are built to fit that story.
If you'd rather ignore the story and focus on searching for obvious clues and items that just might be your ticket to opening that lock or finding that key, you can still make your way through, the puzzles simply get a bit harder, and the room becomes more challenging.
Those who want a strong narrative and love some logical connections can find it here in Zombie Bite... and those that prefer to speed through the room, get some jump scares, screams, and crack a few codes, you'll find that here as well.
We are committed to providing the very best Escape Room Experience, and since we opened, Zombie Bite has undergone many cycles of improvements, tweaks, and rewrites. If you played it back when we first opened, we highly recommend giving it another go.
Comentários