Last weekend, I went to Red Door Escape Room in San Mateo, CA, for a birthday celebration, which was my first time ever doing an escape room. Coincidentally, I also happened to have a Critical Play due with the theme of “Mysteries & Escape Rooms.” Since things happened to work out that way, I as super pumped to focus this Critical Play on one of the escape rooms we did, which was called, “Captain Maniacal’s Lairbratorium,” an original escape room created by the folks at Red Door Escape Room. This escape room is recommended for people ages 14+ and is designed for groups of 2-4 of people who know each other (friends, families, coworkers, etc.). This specific escape room can only be played in-person at the San Mateo location.
The escape room follows the story of Captain Maniacal, an eccentric mad scientist that is hellbent on bringing his robot Javier II to life. As his usual assistant has proven to be unhelpful, the players must put their lab skills to the test, build the robot, and learn what Captain Maniacal knows about the mythical Red Door.
“Captain Maniacal’s Lairbratorium” weaves in narrative through a non-linear progression system in which each completed puzzle reveals further detail into the life story of Captain Maniacal. As players solve puzzles scattered throughout Captain Maniacal’s Lairbratorium, they unlock the pieces needed to actually build the robot that tells the story, which ultimately adds to the lore of the overarching narrative of the Red Door.
When players enter the room for the first time, they are greeted by Captain Maniacal’s Lairbratorium, which features the incomplete body of Javier II. The players do not know what this robot is nor what they are supposed to be doing. Suddenly, a TV turns on, playing a video left behind by Captain Maniacal, urging the players to complete building the robot that his assistant could not finish. In this way, we take follow an embedded narratives as Captain Maniacal’s new assistants trying to complete this robot. As the video ends, the players are off to the races, tasked with solving the puzzles that Captain Maniacal has left throughout the room to unlock the different parts needed for Javier II’s body.
From a design perspective, the setting’s architecture places clear role in controlling the story. As willing participants in the escape room, we are bound by the constraints of the escape room that places boundaries on how free we are to move within the space. While we very well could force open the boxes containing Javier II’s body parts, this would violate the rules of the game and break our immersion. Beyond the actual physical confines of the room, we accept that the only way to progress through the game is by completing the puzzles. These are artificially defined rules that we must follow as players of the game.
Furthermore, the nature of an escape room relies on the ideas of concealment and tests of skill. That is, the pieces of Javier II’s body that the players need in order to complete the escape room are hidden away behind a variety of laboratory-themed puzzles. When we begin, we are in a state of incomplete information; we do not immediately know what the puzzles we even need to solve are, let alone how to actually solve them. This game’s architecture intentionally withholds these valuable artifacts from the player, and we are tasked with figuring out how to access these artifacts while abiding by the constraints of the escape room.
The escape room features an array of locked boxes, which suggests that the pieces we needed are in these boxes. How do we open these boxes? We do not know at the start. What we do see is an assortment of lab equipment and machines, locks and levers, robot-building blueprints, and even mice figurines. The escape room does not tell us what we are supposed to do. It is up to the players to explore around the room and see what we can do. This adds another layer of complexity to progressing through the escape room because we may not even be sure that the things that we are interacting with are the right puzzles. For all we know, there could be red herrings strewn about that take our attention away from the real puzzles.
But as we figure out what some of the puzzles are and solve them (figuring out the right lock combination for one of the boxes, pulling levers in the right order, finding all of the mice figurines, etc.), we are able to finally gain access to the different body parts needed to complete Javier II. And as we attach these parts to him, he comes to life and reveals new aspects of the story that were not immediately known to us: why Captain Maniacal needs Javier II to be built, what turned Captain Maniacal into a mad scientist to begin with, what happens after Javier II is built, what is the Red Door, etc. Although I do not know for sure as I only did the escape room once, I imagine that the voice recordings that Javier II plays do not depend on the order that body parts are attached to him. In this way, the puzzles can be completed in any order, allowing for a non-linear progression through the escape room.
As STEM majors, entering the laboratory setting definitely felt somewhat familiar, albeit nothing like the crazy lairbratorium that Captain Maniacal has. Within these settings, a lot of the layout informed our thoughts on how we should play. For example, there were lab coats hung on a coat rack, which hinted to us that there may be important clues within its pockets (there were). As someone who works with mice a lot, seeing the mice figurines hinted to me that they may be key to solving a puzzle (they were). Within this room, every object there made sense to be there, and we were feeling really immersed in the our role’s as lab assistants. This immersion was further facilitated through the use of atmosphere. The dreary grunge of the laibratorium’s architecture along with the electrical and chemical sound effects playing made it really feel like we were in some sort of underground lair tucked away from the rest of society where Captain Maniacal could secretly work on his experiments. That being said, there were certainly some architectural cliches that helped us progress, such as the levers being painted with bright colors or the poster of the periodic table highlighting certain elements that might be of use.
As we completed the final puzzle and attached the last piece of Javier II’s body, he gave us a monologue about Captain Maniacal and his relation to the Red Door. What I find particularly interesting about the Red Door Escape Room is that they have an overarching narrative about the mythical Red Door, in which all of the seemingly disconnected escape rooms on various themes (a laboratory, a carnival, a prison, a fairy tale land, etc.). All of these escape rooms have the shared architecture of an actual red door, hinting that they are all part of the same connected world. While we did not have the ability to actually play the other escape rooms, just the idea of this connected narrative over the Red Door’s mystery was really intriguing, and we are planning on returning again to try some of the other rooms. I think that the mechanic of using multiple escape rooms to tell a bigger, more complex narrative is real cool as I have not seen this done elsewhere, although perhaps this is just their way of getting people to play more rooms and pay more money. That being said, parts of Javier II’s monologue did not make a whole lot of sense because we did not have some of the context from the other rooms, but it was certainly still a great experience!
While this is my first in-person escape room, I have played games like Escape Rooms: Room Escape on my iPad, which did feature similar puzzle solving aspects. But what I think really separates the two games is the physicality of doing an in-person escape room. As opposed to tapping on my iPad screen, actually solving puzzles in real-life with my hands felt much more immersive than any iPad game ever could. It was also a different experience to play with other people as opposed to the single player experience on the iPad game. In real life, working together with other people made for a lot more of a collaborative fun experience through a notion of fellowship, as opposed to doing everything in complete silence when I played the iPad game in the middle of the night. I definitely recommend in-person escape rooms over mobile games that cannot really recreate the same sort of experience.
Given that this was my first time at an escape room, I am pretty proud that we were able to solve it. Stepping out of the escape room and the embodied experience of being a lab assistant felt similar to how I feel when I exit the movie theater after watching an action movie. I would definitely love to go back!
Ethical Reflection
One thing that is important to note when playing games, especially real life games, is the accessibility of the game to its players. Although this was my first time playing an escape room and although I do not have a disability, I did have some moments where even I thought about the escape room’s accessibility.
For one, the Red Door Escape Room was located on the second floor of a mall. At that time, the nearest elevator was out of service, leaving the stairs and an escalator as the only modes of getting to the escape room. For someone who uses a wheelchair, for example, even getting to the game in the first place could become challenging. Had the elevator been working, this would have been less of an issue, but it still stands that there may be times when the elevator is out of service, making the game less accessible to certain populations.
Additionally, within the escape room itself, many of the puzzles were in fixed positions, either high up on the wall or completely touching the ground. For individuals with lower mobility, this could pose a problem as their ability to interact directly with puzzles may be more limited. There were some features that could serve to mitigate these barriers such as having some puzzles that someone could move around and hold in their hand, but not all of the puzzles were like this as they were bolted into their positions.
Further, the actual body parts that we needed to attach to Javier II were somewhat on the heavier side, which again poses another accessibility challenge. From what I saw, it did not seem like there were any features that could help address this issue as attaching these body parts were necessary to completing the puzzle. If someone in the escape room could not lift the parts, they may not be able to complete the puzzle.
On the whole, it does not seem like “Captain Maniacal’s Lairbratorium” was designed with accessibility in mind. The nature of this specific escape room did require a level of mobility and maneuvering that may be more challenging to individuals that have a disability. Aspects of the puzzle-solving seem to expect players to be able-bodied, which does limit its accessibility to certain populations. If the Red Door Escape Room were to implement features that increase accessibility, perhaps by taking on a designer that is able to design the escape room in such a way where people that have disabilities are not hindered in their ability to complete puzzles, even more people could have fun in this escape room.
