If it’s one thing we’ve all learned recently, it’s that the world is a forever changing place. But sometimes change can be good – and in the case of our industry, that very change has spurred an evolution of just what is possible. Suddenly, we’re no longer bound to a physical location to enjoy a new escape game. Suddenly, we’re not dependent on friends and family being nearby to join in the fun. With the advent of Remote Play Games, quite literally, the world is our playground.

First, you’ll need to pick the type of Remote Play Game that’s best for you. That’s right, there’s different styles to chose from; three, in fact. Let’s take a look at our streamlined presentation of each classification of Remote Play Game most commonly found online: Avatar, Digital, and Audio.

There’s really no wrong answer here. We’ve found great examples in all styles of gameplay. This one really will come down to personal preference, although Avatar – with a live host physically present in a brick and mortar escape room does tend to be the most common. We’re put extensive effort in creating EA’s Remote Play Directory, with the hope that it will serve as a helpful hint to which games might be best suited for your first impressions in this new frontier. But picking a game is merely the first puzzle in enjoying this whole new virtual form of entertainment.

There’s one phrase that we’ve used in these past few weeks more times than our team has collectively uttered in our lifetimes: uncharted waters. It truly applies to much of the world around us in these uncertain times, but, perhaps in a sense even more so to the new genre of Remote Play escape games. Suddenly, it doesn’t matter if you’ve played ten, fifty, a hundred, or five hundred different escape games. When entering this new digital world, we’ve all, in effect, been reset to one. Everything you think you know – every strategy that you’ve learned along the way – in a sense, is wrong. Truly, these are uncharted waters.

It is possible that some experienced players may initially find frustration in a remote play environment; our advice is take a breath and stick with it. It’s critically important to remember that together, we’re all essentially learning a brand new skill set. Just as venues are learning how to even run a brick and mortar game remotely over the internet, we, the players, have to be patient and essentially learn how to play them.

Try to think back to your first real escape game experience. Try to forget everything you know from dozens – or even hundreds – of games that you may have played since. On that first game, none of us instinctively knew to gather all of the evidence – each found object – into a single centralized location to begin analyzing how they may connect with the environment around us. None of us instinctively knew to immediately survey the room from top to bottom to take inventory on what types of codes we need to solve for, or how many keys we might need to obtain.  All of these things that are, today, simply second nature to experienced players were learned skills that we’ve each developed through experience. With remote play games, we need to develop a whole new set of skills and learn to play differently.

A few pro-tips we’ve quickly learned are to use your personal home environments to the best of your abilities while playing a Remote Play Game.

• Do you have multiple monitors on your computer? If so, cast one as your live video feed of the room, with a second as a window solely to display clues, items and vital objects found in digital form.
• Keep your tabs organized; try to rearrange them so that like objects sit next to each other across the top of the browser, making them easier to locate quickly.
• To the same point, keep your work space “clean” by closing tabs of any completed or used items, in an effort to limit what’s left in front of you.
• Perhaps the best method we’ve found, though, admittedly won’t be as readily available to all players. Do you have Adobe Photoshop, or a similar graphic design program on your personal computer? If so, we recommend copy/pasting all of these digital assets onto a single work space. Although this takes a few minutes to organize up front, once implemented, it allows remote players the ability to see everything side by side, in scale, to compare each object exactly as they would in a brick and mortar experience.
• Last, and perhaps most importantly – don’t let your pride stop you from asking for more hints than you normally would in a brick and mortar escape room. Understand that things which may be simple to spot in person will always be harder to find through the eye of a camera. Ask your host if they’re seeing things that might be more obvious to you if you were with them. Now more than ever, communication really is key.

Escape games have always been about thinking outside the box, problem solving and finding solutions in often unexpected ways. With this new genre of remote play games, that notion has never been more true. One could debate the merits of playing physical games versus remote experiences – but at the end of the day, the simple fact is that they are different. Is one better than the other? Maybe – but the key is they are different in such a way that they each are an enjoyable experience. And for now, this new genre of the industry offers the one thing we truly need most: an escape from reality around us, to “gather” safely with our closest friends. But this time, we get to do it no matter where they may be in the world, joined in a common experience that brings us all together in a way that, before today, was never even possible.

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