In the past, people have asked why we retire a room when we do. This post is to share some history and reasoning into this as we get ready to retire our 7th room at Escape Room Herndon, The Mystery of Room 213.
First the history. We started ERH as part of Ravenchase Adventures and as the sister company to the great Escape Room RVA (in Richmond). To open quickly, we designed two rooms ourselves (Mary In The Black and Dreamscape) and adapted two former RVA rooms (Crypt and MindTrap). Mary In the Black was the first room I developed primarily on my own, it was based on a story from the movie Ex-Machina. I loved that room and the story twist it had, but this was so “early years” escape room tech and puzzles. It would not look good today, but in 2016 it felt amazing.
As a team, we learned so much by building Dreamscape and Mary’s. So many new puzzle styles, narratives, and technical props that we wanted to apply to a new room. Around this time (late 2016), Supervillain's had retired at RVA. It was one of their top rooms and we wanted to bring it up to Herndon. We took the shell and added in some new tech we had been working on (lasers!). It was a blast and the improvements made a lasting impression on our guests as well as our team.
With the retirement of Dreamscape in 2017, it gave us a chance to make a whole new game from scratch. We followed our passions and created LAST HOPE, our own personal homage to Star Wars. We were able to take everything we’d learned from the previous rooms and apply it to the building on this new game. We used tech and puzzles we wouldn’t have even imagined of just 1 year prior (more lasers, videos, human circuits, electric glass, and holograms!)
LAST HOPE was the validation for me. Each new room CAN be an improvement on the one it replaces. It has been our goal since that we will build a room if we think we can improve its predecessor. And so, with each new build, we have tried to use things we’ve learned along the way to make the next room even better.
This brings us to the “why?”. The main reason is, to improve upon the games we make and to create new stories along the way. Each new game can build on the shoulders of the before it and tell a story that sends the player on a new journey. At the end of the day, we’re just guides through an adventure into something unexpected. We hope The Island of Dr.Moreau will continue on this tradition and offer a moment of magic (and terror) to you all very soon.