Mobile vs Real Life vs Virtual Escape Game. Which one do you prefer?
Which is better? We have listed 3 types of escape games: Real life escape game is the tried and true in person escape room gaming that we all love, virtual game offers an escape room gaming experience that can be set up from a remote location and played from the comfort of your home, while mobile escape game is simpler switch phone based game that can be played anytime, anywhere.
1- Mobile Escape Game
There are many wonderful mobile escape games. Many Games out there can provide you with stunning visuals such as The House of Da Vinci, which is a real selling point for the aesthetically minded. Mobile escape games also allow one the flexibility to game with friends easily. All you have to do is add each other in the game and just like that, it’s “game time” . The portability of a mobile phone means that a world of fun is literally at your fingertips, and can easily offer a fun escape during your commute. The top trending mobile games currently are Adventure Escape series that sucks players into a well crafted and original storyline. In ‘All That Remains: Part 1’ the game includes a camera function that you will use to take pictures of clues. This added interactivity has not been seen in other mobile games and bridges the virtual and the real worlds. In The Escapists 1 and 2, you play the role of a prisoner tasked with collecting items to help you eventually escape, plus other challenges. As immersive as mobile games are, the downside is that you will not truly feel immersed in the game. While mobile escape games are great to pass the time, you are still ultimately looking at your phone screen and playing by touch screen. It will not come close to the exhilaration of escaping a room as one would experience in person, not to mention that if your battery runs out, your time is essentially up.
2- Real Life Escape Games
Real life escape games allow you to physically touch the walls and handle clues and puzzles in a faithfully reproduced 3D space. Physical escape rooms are much more realistic, with the set like rooms immersing you in a setting that matches the theme. The hands-on feeling of solving puzzles with a baseline requirement of dexterity and agility to move around the room will give players a more embodied and memorable experience generally. By engaging all 5 senses, you may find yourself experiencing an extra kick or adrenaline rush while you’re completing the puzzles. The rooms you are placed in tend to be realistically recreated, for example you may find yourself face to face with a life sized Marionette on a stage alongside yourself, as if you are a character in a story that is unfolding in real time at Breakout. The downside to it is the number of players that can join in on the game is limited as well since the rooms vary in how many people they can accommodate. If you’re a big group of 30 people, perhaps physical escape games aren’t for you unless you don’t mind dividing your group into smaller fractions of people. Theoretically, it is not impossible for anyone to create a stadium sized escape room to accommodate that many people like Squid Game but generally, escape rooms tend to be limited to a few persons due to spatial constraints.
3- Virtual Escape Game
A virtual escape game is an escape room game that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home. It is normally the go to choice of companies that want a fun time at an affordable price while working remotely. Instead of traveling to the escape room’s physical site, the escape room will come to you – virtually. The online games at Breakout are generally conducted in a standard duration of between 90 to 120 minutes. With conferencing tools like Zoom and Google Meet used across the board these days, communicating remotely enables virtual meetups instead of going with the usual in-person escape room experience. Breakout’s “Finding Chris” is one such interactive virtual game, a rescue mission that puts you in an immersive situation so you can feel like heroes in a movie as the game is conducted in real time and you can interact with live actors as well. An added bonus is that the virtual escape game called “The Intern” by Breakout can accommodate up to 50+ people in one session and is very popular among the corporate sectors for their online team building game.
In the newer virtual escape games, you can also communicate with your team through web chat. Having your group mates in front of you, on camera brings an added dimension of interactivity that translates to even more fun. For virtual games you will need a strong internet connection. If you don’t, you may get left behind and end up a burden on your teammates who will have lost a player.
There are many ways to experience an escape game, whether online or in person. There are pros and cons to all of them but having a variety of options opens up the experience to literally every person in the world no matter where you are and how far away you are from the closest human being. For sure, in person, physical games should be your choice as they are, in our opinion, the most fun. For those who are more cautious of covid cases and worried of close contact cases however, virtual escape games are a great option, whether you are home quarantined or if you just feel safer staying home. Virtual escape games are borderless too, meaning if you have colleagues/ friends/ family overseas, you can reconnect with them over 2 hours of interactive and immersive gameplay. Now that you have a better idea of the types of escape rooms available, go ahead and book your session here!
Posted on 11 Jan 2022
