Cryptology Escape Rooms' Blog

Dreamscape was an idea that was born before Cryptology Nottingham’s relocation back in February 2018. It was a critical factor in deciding what the next venue should look like to be able to house the new escape games.

A Developing Market

Even in 2019 the vast majority of customers that come through our doors are first-time escapers. When Cryptology Nottingham opened in 2015 a good 98% had never done an escape room before, and were just looking for something new and exciting to do. Today, the majority of people have heard about them or know somebody who has done an escape room.

Because escape rooms are still new for most people, it is not always advantageous to diversify too much. However, the city of Nottingham has a lot of strong games and so a point of difference needs to be made.

Many Rooms and Themes In One

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Dreamscape involves puzzles that are difficult to put inside the standard escape room. Normally, puzzles flow in sequence which can cause bottlenecks, particularly for larger groups. Dreamscape has been designed to combat this. The experience has 5 puzzle chains which can be solved simultaneously, each innovative puzzle path is themed for the particular dream you are in. The hour is split up between these rooms and there are a variety of challenges to complete. The game has been purposely designed where you may not be able to solve them all. It is suitable for team-building, friends, families, but especially escape room experts.

The problem with designing a 5-theme based escape game is the development time! Work began in earnest in March of 2018, but Cryptology Sheffield‘s First Contact got in the way of the summer deadline. This gave Mark and Samuel the thinking time required to develop ideas and puzzles. When First Contact was complete, it was full steam ahead from September of 2018.

Cerebral, Physical, Observation & More Puzzles

The best escape rooms utilise many different styles of puzzle, and most importantly include teamwork. The different themes and settings within Dreamscape will give scope to use each puzzle type, in new and inventive ways. Teamwork is essential for some puzzles, and for smaller groups this may mean sacrificing some puzzle paths. The difficulty in getting this right is making the game solvable for sizes of groups. Dreamscape caters for group of two all the way up to groups of five.

Always Something To Do

To avoid the puzzle bottleneck, all challenges are solvable from-the-off. However, not all will be completable in the time allowed. Cryptology is very conscious that this is very different from the standard escape room where you get to see and solve everything (hopefully). We hope this change in the format is well-received and leaves customers with something truly unique, exciting and a talking point!