Reality Escape Pod - Escape Rooms & Immersive Games

 "Pick an immersive subgenre, and I think that it can be made better by the escape room model." For the Season 11 finale of Reality Escape Pod, we’re turning the spotlight inward. After years of writing reviews, producing podcasts, running RECON, hosting Tours, and building a community around immersive experiences, we asked our audience a simple question "What do you think?" Hundreds of you respon...

"The connection between the solver and the setter is really important." If you're a daily puzzle lover, your morning might start something like mine: pouring a cup of coffee and jumpstarting the brain with my favorite snack-sized games. Chief among those are the snappy games at LinkedIn, such as Queens, Zip, Tango, and Patches. The man behind this collection of puzzles powering LinkedIn's Games se...

" There are three defining characteristics of a Sauve Qui Peut game: an unusual underlying concept, commitment to the bit, and beautifully painted murals." They do things a little differently around here. That's been Steven Keller's personal design philosophy ever since he started making his first escape rooms at his company, Sauve Qui Peut, located in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu in Quebec, Canada. I...

“We really wanted to make a game that would encourage creators to make more weird stuff.” Low budgets, tight spaces, and a DIY mentality. As it turns out, indie filmmaking and creating escape rooms have a lot in common. James Hamer-Morton & Charlie Bond of Deadlocked Escape Rooms in Reading, UK, know this better than anyone. They joined us on REPOD to talk about creating their quirky, puzzle-d...

"We don't fear spoilers because a good room has more to offer than just the set that you saw in a photo. It must be something that you feel also." When most people think of an escape room, they think of puzzles, padlocks, with maybe a light narrative slapped on top. When Rémy Strobbe and the team at Live Cinema created Zone 51, however, they thought: okay, but what if instead of solving puzzles, y...

"We take your favorite games from TV, but we put our own twist on it." Sound design is the most underused tool in escape room design. It's not just for ambiance; it's a feedback system. It tells players what they did, redirects them when they're wrong, and stops them from doing the same wrong thing over and over. Sound design plays a huge role at The Escape Game and Great Big Game Show. Troy Armst...

Answer our 2026 Audience Census! "I wasn't an Imagineer because of the dollar. It's because I wanted to do something marvelous for people to enjoy." Captain Eo. Ghostbusters. Men in Black. Team America. Star Tours. The Muppet Movie. If you’ve ever fallen in love with puppeted characters that felt impossibly alive, there’s a good chance Terri Hardin worked on them. A master puppeteer, creature buil...

Answer our 2026 Audience Census! "I want to make things big and explosive." You've just been thrown in jail, locked up inside a massive prison complex in the Netherlands. Along with 125 other prisoners, you must scheme, bribe, blackmail, commit mayhem, and find your way out. This is Prison Escape, an immersive experience structured as a cinematic escape from prison. In 2025, Prison Escape ran 280...

Answer our 2026 Audience Census! "Try to find the delight in puzzles." Amanda and Errol have been fixtures in the escape room community for years, so of course we had to get the OG escape room podcasters on REPOD. This episode is basically a love letter to everything weird and wonderful about playing escape rooms, designing immersive games, and the incredible community we found along the way. From...

Answer our 2026 Audience Census! " A big mistake [is saying] 'look at our thing', instead of 'How do I empower and serve my customer?'" What is the future of storytelling? If you ask Charlie Melcher, the answer lies in "living stories," stories where the audience has a role and participates. Indeed, the subtitle of his new book, The Future of Storytelling is "How Immersive Experiences Are Transfor...

Answer our 2026 Audience Census! " There's lots of places in the world you can gamify." Emma Rochon and Melissa Eapen were young game masters working at a local escape room company over 12 years ago. They loved this "new" genre of entertainment, and asked the owners how they could get more involved in growing the business or designing new rooms. The owners replied with "There's no growth in [escap...

Answer our 2026 Audience Census! "One of the highlights of the Finnish larp is heavy, hard emotions. Crying is very much associated with Nordic style and Finnish style larping." Have you ever wanted to trauma bond with a hundred strangers aboard a spaceship while fleeing an alien threat? Do you want to be emotionally devastated while making hard choices about love, sacrifice, and humanity? Then Fi...

In the first half of this episode, David and Peih-Gee were joined by episode guest Will Shortz. Together they discussed the proliferation of daily puzzles, talked about global trends in puzzling, and did an ideation session with WIll on how to add puzzles to the park that he is creating in Indiana.  In the second half of the episode David and Peih-Gee were joined by Editor Steve. They gush about h...

Neil Patrick Harris & Chris Waters - The Capital One Neil Patrick Harris Murder Mystery: Paradise Lost (2025) In this episode, Neil Patrick Harris and Chris Waters of Constructed Adventures joined David and Peih-Gee to spoil the  second Capital One Murder Mystery, this one on a private island.    Want to listen to the rest of the episode? Support us on Patreon. When you support Room Escape Art...

Disney, Trivia Contests, Escape Rooms, Stephen Sondheim, Crosswords, and Puzzles Eagerly awaiting the next season of Reality Escape Pod? Great news! Season 11 is just around the corner. While you wait, enjoy a special compilation from Season 10. Our editor Steve Ewing, has chosen a memorable clip from every episode. It's the ideal way for new listeners to get acquainted with the podcast, and the p...

Nineteen teams of six players each descend on the streets of New York City. The entry fee is $42,000 per team, and the only prize is bragging rights. For twelve puzzle-packed hours, the teams must navigate New York City, all the way from the furthest reaches of Coney Island to the heart of Manhattan. This is Midnight Madness, New York City's most exclusive puzzle hunt. When you support Room Escape...

This is a special one.  Last month Zach Brittle, host of Marriage Therapy Radio reached out because he was curious what escape rooms could teach couples.  After looking into his show and realizing that it's phenomenal, we decided to sit down for a conversation with him. What ensued was really special for both David and Lisa. 

Anne and Chris Lukeman did something totally crazy when the brought a pipelined, actor-driven, escape room sampler complete with a boss battle to Gen Con in 2019. When you support Room Escape Artist on Patreon at $15 per month (or above), you get access to the Spoilers Club, our exclusive podcast where hosts David Spira and Peih-Gee Law chat in depth with creators about iconic escape rooms... spoi...

" I love shining a light on escape room creators and telling their stories." For the last 10 years, Lisa Spira of Room Escape Artist has been tracking the growth of the US Escape Room industry and publishing industry reports. For our Season 10 finale episode, Lisa joins us to talk about this year's annual report. New this year is a collaboration with previous REPOD sponsor Morty , an app that trac...

"A very twist ending. I don't think we were expecting it to go quite that way." The scent of cedar and cloves drift through the air, and all around the lights are twinkling. Boughs of holly and mistletoe decorate the rafters, and you've gathered friends and loved ones to celebrate. It's our first REPOD and PG's Playhouse crossover Holiday Special! To celebrate, we've invited our Podcast Producer,...

" I appreciated your janitor's slow decline into madness." BLOT needs our help! The Bureau of Legitimate and Otherworldly Troubles has suffered a breach in their laboratory, and they need someone to clean up the mess. In the lab, there's a chalkboard to the left,  a table with beakers and test tubes to the right and a small computer desk. The room is covered with a strange, gunky substance all ove...

“ The joy of live performance is that we're all experiencing the same thing together and it unites us as a community.” When I think of crossword puzzles, I think of a quiet, cerebral exercise. It's often a solitary activity, maybe occasionally yelling out if anyone knows a four letter word for "milk's favorite cookie." When Zach Sherwin considered crossword puzzles, however, he thought, okay... bu...

The Hex Room was an early iconic escape room with a unique mechanic. In fact, it is so unique, that to our best knowledge, no other escape room has attempted a similar game structure. Creators Luke and Madison Rhoades join us to talk about the history of The Hex Room. They opened this game in 2016, shortly after playing their first escape room, back in the very early years of escape rooms. I found...

"Guests have become more sophisticated and our product needs to follow suit." Disney Theme Parks have always been at the top when it comes to large scale, interactive entertainment attractions. Doris Hardoon is a legendary Imagineer, and we don't use that term lightly. Her creative vision has graced every Disney Castle Park on the planet, from EPCOT to Disneyland and Disneyland Paris to Disney's A...

"Screenwriting is like a puzzle that the writers are putting together." When a television screenwriter who loves puzzles and immersive experiences turns her attention to creating a boxed puzzle game, the result is beguiling and thoroughly engrossing. The Morrison Game Factory has a deeply intimate and emotional story that pulled at my heartstrings while still engaging my puzzle brain. Screenwriter...