Humour

Humour

No one is doing an escape room for the jokes. No matter how funny an escape room may be, without good puzzles it will fail to satisfy any escape room fan.

However, carefully deployed humour can add so much to the experience that it would be a huge shame to ignore it. After all, some of the funniest moments in cinema are in otherwise serious movies.

The benefits of humour

World building

Those who have played our rooms will have noticed the many make-believe products which satirize the era in which they’re set. Such things add cohesion and believability to the world we’ve created, and reward players who look around, as there could be a joke hidden in the most mundane-looking object.

 Characters and story

Humour can also add richness to the narration and story. Rather than simply explaining what to do next, with added humour the narrator can be turned into a genuine character, and this also provides more motivation for players to actually listen to what they have to say.

Building tension

Humour can also be used to build tension. Using tongue-in-cheek humour you can raise the stakes to an unbelievable level while keeping players immersed. For example, one of our rooms sees the players being descended upon by policemen, then police dogs, and finally the military, complete with tanks. If told in a humourless way this would most likely snap players out of the story (since it’s clearly so implausible), but with a little bit of humour players happily go along with it.

Balance is of course key. It’s important that the jokes don’t confuse players or undermine the more serious parts of the game, but if deployed correctly, humour can turn an escape room into a living, breathing (and funny) world.