Preparing for an Escape Room: How To Pick the Right Team

Are you interested in tackling the mysteries and puzzles of an escape room, but preparing for your escape room experience is feeling overwhelming?

Escape rooms are both an exciting challenge and a lot of fun, but you can’t solve it solo. You need a good, strong team with you for the best escape room experience! So, according to our escape room experts, the best way to get yourself ready for a win is to pick the right team.

Before you book an escape room, read our tips about preparing for an escape room by creating the perfect escape room team!

The Benefits of a Strong Escape Room Teams

Some escape room players jump into the game with people they don’t know, or with people that they don’t work well with.

However, in an escape room, you only have an hour to solve the puzzles and claim your victory, so there just isn’t time for icebreakers and team-building exercises!

You already know how frustrating a group project can be when nobody knows each other or when one person is doing the work. Undoubtedly, frustration is not the kind of experience you want in an escape room.

Simply put, a strong, united team can tackle the puzzles of an escape room much more effectively than a disorganized, non-unified team.

Plus, when you have a strong team, taking on the puzzles and mysteries together, you increase your likelihood of victory!

Nevertheless, win or lose, when you have a strong escape room team, you will have fun.

Why? Because you spent that hour playing as a cohesive group that communicated well and tackled each challenge with teamwork, competence, and a good mood. Even if the timer runs out before your team can escape the room, you will have spent that hour having an exciting, fulfilling, and overall enjoyable adventure!

How to Prepare for & Pick Perfect Escape Room Teams

So, you want to create the perfect escape room team before you book your room? Here are some guidelines to keep in mind while picking your team members.

1. Number of Members: Less Is More

When it comes to escape room team size, different escape rooms allow different numbers of participants. Some private escape rooms call for two to six team members, while others allow up to seven or eight players.

Public escape rooms can allow even larger groups!

It may be tempting to follow a “Two heads are better than one” kind of logic and bring as many people as possible with you to the escape room. However, a more appropriate saying would be, “Too many cooks can spoil the soup”!

The more people in an escape room, the more crowded it is. That leads to spending more time catching your teammates up on your discoveries. In addition, it's more likely that someone will end up standing around with nothing to do.

Stick to half or two-thirds of the escape room’s maximum capacity. For example, if an escape room allows you to bring ten people, select a group of five, six, or seven people instead. Or, check out 60out’s array of escape rooms that are best for large groups.

2. Age and Experience: Peers Work Together Better

Rules and age limits can vary across escape rooms. Some rules are for adults only, while others have puzzles that are great for children as well. Make sure to read the rules for that escape room before you choose your team and book your room.

What’s even more important is that your team be able to effectively communicate and work together well.

This means that you need a common context, something that unites you.

Even if you don’t know your teammates very well, if you’re all in your twenties, then you have a similar way of communicating and interacting with the world. This means that your styles of play are more likely to be similar. This is essential for solving escape room puzzles.

With friends, coworkers, or family members, you have an even bigger advantage in puzzle-solving. Because of your shared history, you already know how to talk to each other and "play together" outside of the escape room. You can put that knowledge and experience to use in the game!

3. Escape Room Team Roles: Know Your Team Member's Strengths

We all bring different skills to the table, and it’s good to play to your strengths in an escape room.

Before beginning the game, take a moment to assign specific escape room team roles to your team members, based on their skills and interests. Depending on your team, the roles will vary. Here are some suggestions:

• Leader: This is the captain of the crew, the conductor of the orchestra. The leader stays focused on the overall goal and assigns tasks to get there, while the other members report back to the leader about what they’ve found.
• Searcher: Escape rooms are full of objects that serve as both puzzles and clues and some of them are hidden in unlikely places. The searcher focuses on finding things, perusing every inch of the room and brings everything they find out into the open so that it can be seen and worked on by the rest of the team.
• Organizer: This team member keeps all of the objects the Searcher finds in neat and tidy piles and looks for patterns among the clues. If there’s a lock that needs a four-number combination in one part of the escape room, and numbers scattered throughout the rest of the room, the Organizer will make sure they’re put together!
• Idea-Generator: Some puzzles require a lot of out-of-the-box thinking. The Idea-Generator can look at a banana and rattle off a hundred different things it could represent — and on that list could very well be the key to escaping the room!
• Simplifier: The simplifier is a team member who can keep things simple and tell it like it is. Sometimes a key is just a key, so the Simplifier points out the obvious details that might be overlooked by players caught up in the excitement of puzzle-solving!

Why Play a 60out Escape Room?

Now that you’re done preparing for an unforgettable escape room experience and have your team settled, it’s time to choose an escape room, and the rooms presented by 60out are a great option!

Voted one of the best escape rooms in Los Angeles, 60out has locations all over the greater L.A. area. Each location includes different escape rooms.

These rooms span a wide variety of topics and genres, so whether you’re a fantasy fan, a sci-fi buff, or a horror fan, 60out has a game for you! These rooms also vary in difficulty level, providing fantastic experiences for both newcomers and escape room veterans.

Best of all, 60out escape rooms are private rooms. Thus, you can prepare your team without worrying about dealing with strangers!

Assemble your escape room team and book an escape room adventure now!