Mobile escape rooms of all shapes and sizes are the newest attraction in the industry. But debates and discussion reign over what is what a mobile escape room, and what is the preferred style.
As the escape room industry is evolving, requests for activities that can be brought TO players instead of players coming to games is growing. Groups, particularly corporate groups, want to have games that they can play at home, at their place of work, at parties, etc.
Mobile Escape Room – Pop-Up
Pop-Up Trailer, Pop-Up Tent, Pop-Up Shop, you hear this term all the time now.
The concept is simple, and I’m going to borrow from the popup shops here:
A pop-up retail space is a venue that is temporary: the space could be a sample sale one day and host a private cocktail party the next evening. The trend involves “popping up” one day, then disappearing anywhere from one day to several weeks later. These shops, while small and temporary, are used by companies to build interest in their product or service, and seed their product with cultural influencers.
Wikipedia – Pop-up retail
A mobile escape room game is at its core, a popup. A method of attracting interest in your product/service (whatever you want to call escape rooms) and gathering future customers. It gets people interested and maybe you can even grab a bit of money along the way.
Mobile Escape Room – Tabletop
Generally speaking, a TableTop game is defined as any game with cards, dice, tiles, or boards that are usually played on a table or other flat surface. Like games of sport, TableTop games have tournaments and can be very competitive.
Amelia Con – What is Tabletop?
Perfect for conferences, weddings, special events that take place in boardrooms or locations with tables, a tabletop escape room game would be excellent. Most owners think of a tabletop game quite literally, boxes on top of the table that need to be opened up using clues found on or near the table.
Mobile Escape Room – Portable
Finding a definition for a portable game brings me to portable handheld console and that’s not quite accurate. The word “portable” is a keyword used by escape room creators but is widely variable in its definitions.
For myself, portable means it fits in my car. I can take it pretty much wherever and require nothing else – except perhaps power – than what I bring along.
Mobile Escape Room – Trailer
A game in a trailer. The trailer concept of mobile escape rooms is pretty easy to imagine. It’s an escape room game but instead of a room, it’s a trailer.
A mobile home (also trailer, trailer home, house trailer, static caravan, residential caravan) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer). Used as permanent homes, for holiday or temporary accommodation, they are left often permanently or semi-permanently in one place, but can be moved, and may be required to move from time to time for legal reasons.
Wikipedia – Mobile Home
Yeah, that’s a trailer below. It’s pretty incredible what they can create nowadays.
Not every “trailer” is an RV style. Sometimes it’s a truck trailer, a transport trailer instead.
A quick Google search tells me that these are known as dry vans, but also trailers, also trucks and lots of other things. Storage vans? Long haul transport? Freight trucks?
Mobile Escape Room – Tent
These are the games that I run myself. I call them portable, popup, mobile and mainly I call them tent games. Using a 10′ x 10′ tent is super easy, I can set up just about anywhere with vinyl walls and a canopy cover.
A tent mobile escape room comes together quite quickly and easily. A great way for any escape room owner to pull together some of their existing props and set up a local event to promote themselves.
It’s a low-cost method that I highly recommend!
Big Groups And Bigger!
Trying to achieve a game solution for groups of 20+ is a goal of all escape room owners and using a mobile escape room can be the best opportunity for that. More and more game options are popping up on the marketplace, of the scavenger hunt to paper-puzzle styles alike. I’ll try to talk more about this later.
Interested in more information about setting up a Mobile Escape Room? Check Out This Post!
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