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The Future of The Séance

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The Séance is an interactive theatre experience written and directed by Madison Rhoades, and ran from Oct. 3rd– Nov. 23rd. We had a total of 182 shows and 1,148 audience members attend! It was a lot of fun while it lasted, and it was hard to say goodbye after an additional 3 week extension but all good things must come to an end… or do they?

The Séance was designed to be an experience that could be easily altered and remounted again in a historical location. We are reaching out to historical societies across the nation in hopes that The Séance comes back again this year with a new home! If you know a location that could be a good fit for this show, please let us know!

The production is easily changeable to suit a historical location without causing damage to the existing structure. It would be great to work with historical societies, museums, theaters, and non-profit organizationsto help bring in revenue.  Participants will learn the history of the location, learn how ghost hunting tools work, perform a séance, and get to explore the space in organized small groups. During their experience they will stumble upon a mystery to solve that will reveal deeper secrets.

The Séance allowed audience members to feel like they were part of a real-life ghost adventure where they got to experience theatrical paranormal events. They were given clear goals and challenges to overcome as a team, and are were able to interact with the performers and their surroundings to progress the story forward.  

We received amazing reviews from press, including: HorrorBuzz.com, Sinful Celluloid, The Haunt Girl, Nightmarish Conjurings, Haunting.net, Gaming Shogun, Media Geeks, No Proscenium, The Scare Zone, Just Horror Stuff, Westcoaster, Halloween Every Night, Hollywood Gothique, Nerd Reactor, Creepy Kingdom, and Enjoy Orange County. Here are a few quotes:

“This is definitely a must-see show, do not miss it!” -HorrorBuzz.com

“The other thing I really loved about this experience was that it wasn’t an escape room but instead an immersive experience that implemented escape room elements.”

-Nightmarish Conjurings

“The Séance is an outstanding immersive horror experience with just enough spooks for veteran haunters while at the same time not being too extreme for newbies.” -Gaming Shogun

“The cast, the special effects, the story, and the general experience had by the guests was superb and I can’t recommend this experience enough.“
-Just Horror Stuff

The Séance has been designed to work seamlessly with historical buildings, allowing for adjustment to the story, number of participants, and show flow to easily adapt to where this event finds a home. We can offer a variety of services from creating a custom interactive paranormal show that best fits your location, to remounting our 2019 show The Séance, or selling The Séance script for your company to produce, run, and create yourself.

With experience in designing, writing, directing, operating, and building, we are able to take on as many or as few positions as required for the run of your production.

If you are interested in having The Séance, or a similar interactive theatre show at your location please contact Info@CrossRoadsEscapeGames.com

Jason_April_W5_HEADER

Mechanics & Game Play: Changing the Game Part 2 of 3

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With so many escape rooms opening up each year, one of the most important traits a new game needs in order to stand out is unique gameplay mechanics. Most escape rooms follow a pretty standard formula when creating their experience. Basically, your group will be locked in a room together with puzzles and clues hidden throughout the room. You must solve puzzles to unlock puzzles and then solve those puzzles. Once you have solved enough puzzles your group finds a way to escape the room.

That formula is tried and true and can produce very effective experiences. However, if you follow this formula, then your room will compete for space in the memories of your players; especially if you share a theme with other rooms. In essence, the more qualities your room shares with other rooms, the more likely it is to be forgotten in the sea of experiences.

This is why Luke and Madison Rhoades set out to create an escape room that did things differently than any other escape room at the time. The Hex Room, Cross Roads’ first escape room experience, altered the formula to put each and every player in the hot seat at the same time. Rather than allowing your team mates to carry you through the horror experience, the Hex Room requires that each and every player contribute to the game or risk causing the untimely deaths of their entire team.

In the Hex Room, each player takes a personality test before the game to determine which stereotypical horror movie character their personality best fits. Casting players into these archetypes serves two goals. One, it heightens immersion by making the players excited to see which character they got (complete with costumes of course). Two, it lets us know which room each player will be starting in.

Each player will be divided between six different rooms and forced to find ways to communicate and pass clues between the rooms while being physically isolated from their team mates. This adds a challenging new obstacle to the game: the level of communication that is required to succeed was drastically increased. Gone were the days where a team member could point, grunt, and say “look at what I found.” Now the players were expected to not only find their clues, but adequately describe what they found to their team mates. On top of this, each player was now responsible for solving puzzles on their own.

Rather than the entire team focusing on one or two puzzles at a time before moving onto more puzzles, players were working on up to 6 puzzles at once all while screaming to their leader, the Detective, for help. Add in a large timer counting down, movie-quality set design, and suspenseful music, and you have a great recipe for a truly memorable experience.

Sprinkle on a hint system that can only be used when dispatch manages to patch into the detective’s office phone, and you have yourself a brand-new breed of escape room; a fully immersive escape room focused on the goal of creating completely different experiences within the room for each and every single player.

These sorts of innovations are what allows Cross Roads Escape Games to stand out amongst the rapid spread of the escape room hype. It has been several years since the Hex Room was opened and it has gone through many changes and revamps, but its beloved gameplay mechanics have allowed it to compete in the market even to today.

Jason Sakal
Game Master and Manager at Cross Roads Escape Games
Magic Puzzle Wizard Genius

Geoff_March_W3_1

What I Look For In An Escape Room: Geoff

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For me, there are three things that make or break an escape room: Is it immersive, does it make sense, and is it original? At the time of this blog, I have nearly 20 different games under my belt; some games have blown my mind, and some have left me wanting more.

My top escape rooms have all had detailed environments with a clear theme. From the moment the game began (and sometimes even before I entered the building), I was immersed in a believably new environment and excited to partake in something out of the ordinary. I love escape rooms because they take you out of the real world for a while, and I expect the games I play to try and transport me to this new world.

Working in the industry for about three years and partaking in escape rooms before then, I’ve spent plenty of time in games where you are all-too-aware that you are in an office building. I applaud the games that are aware of their limitations and find clever ways to cover up their allotted location. I’ve been privy to the business side of escape rooms and know that sometimes building a room from the ground up or even painting walls is not an option. I’ve seen games find ways to either work around these limitations, or in some cases even embrace it. There’s one escape room I did where they were not able to drastically change their space, so instead they made up for it by turning out the lights and giving each player a handheld candle. I found this incredibly inventive as it made us as players pay less attention to the walls, helped to tell the story, and even became part of the experience. Finding ways to adapt or overcome your space can make or break your game.

For escape rooms that are able to have control over their entire space, immersion is paramount. I remember playing an escape room where the desk staff were part of the experience. They were in character from the time you entered the front door until the time you left the building, and even reacted to how your game played out. Without spoiling too much, once our team successfully completed the game, both the Game Masters had an interesting albeit subtle change in costume, making the outcome of our time traveling adventure reach beyond the walls of the escape room.

It’s also important for escape rooms to make sense. If the puzzles aren’t themed to the environment, it will easily pull players out of the game and feel more like a task than part of the fun. I played a game once that was hidden above a store. Everything in the game was handmade (including some very interesting puzzles), and you could feel the near-bohemian, old world, secret society theme from the time you met a cloaked woman holding a lantern outside of the shop. None of the puzzles were electronic, keeping with the old-world theme. Even the hints were hand-written on tea-stained pieces of paper passed under the door. And even in this low-tech, unsuspecting room, I came across some of the most memorable and enjoyable puzzles I’ve ever experienced.

On the flip side, I’ve also played a few games where it didn’t make sense to have some technology in the room. It’s hard to justify electronic puzzles in a pirate ship or modern televisions in an abandoned cottage. It’s important to purposefully integrate or disguise technology and puzzles to fit into your room.

Originality is another top priority for me. After playing dozens of games, some of them start to blur together. It’s important for a game to do something original to stand out. Cross Roads has some of the most original games I’ve ever played. The Hex Room and The Psych Ward push the boundaries of what escape rooms can be. They are memorable in design because you won’t get to experience another game quite like them. Whether it’s being physically separated in The Hex Room or adding extra layers of strategy and immersive theatre in The Psych Ward, these games are perfect for those who want to experience the next steps in escape rooms.

Geoff Durham
Game Master, Manager
Cross Roads Escape Games

LACC panelist

What is Immersion? What Is Next For Immersive Experiences?

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This past Saturday, Oct. 28th, I had the honor of being a panelist at Stan Lee’s Los Angeles Comic Con on the ‘Future Fandom Immersion’ talk. This panel was super informative and if you missed it, I would love to share some of the things I took away from it.

The panel was hosted by Geeks With Grey Hair’s Jonathan Tavss and Jenny Stiven and had a wonderful mixture of talent for its participants: Brian Crosby (Creative Director, Marvel Themed Entertainment), Matt Motchenbacher (21st Century Fox), Chick Russell (Themed Entertainment Executive Producer/Creative Director – Formerly with Universal and Disney), and myself, Madison Rhoades (Owner and Creative Director of Cross Roads Escape Games).

Panelist Badge

A lot was discussed on this panel, but for this blog, I want to focus on the parts about immersion and my opinions on the subject.

The panel opened with each of us giving our definition of ‘immersion’. I answered with the theatrical example of the forth wall. In theatre, the forth wall is the invisible barrier between actors and audience, normally the space just past the proscenium. I believe that immersion is when the fourth wall becomes unclear or unapparent. The clear divide between actor and audience disappears and the boundaries no longer exist.

My fellow panelists had a different take. Some said it was when a story or movie was so captivating you forgot about the real world and were sucked in this new one. Others said it was when you were surrounded by a new scenic world, like what you would experience inside a ride or inside one of the themed lands in a theme park.

None of these answers are wrong. In fact the true definition of immersion is “a sate of being deeply engaged or involved; absorption,” which is exactly what we all said, but in our own words. Somehow though, these definitions didn’t seem right to me, or strong enough. Something was missing.

To me, immersion is more then just the illusion of disbelief through a story or space. It’s a feeling. It’s an action.

The conversation then turned to the role of the fans, what involvement they have, and our responsibility to them. It was majorly decided that with this new form of immersive entertainment it was our job to make the fans/guests become the star of his or her own movie. Examples were given such as Space Mountain or the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride.

This, again, is where I felt conflicted. Although what they are saying is not wrong, I still felt there was more to it. Sure you all save the day at the end of the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, but what exactly did you do? Nothing. You sat there and watched a video that referenced you a few times, but you didn’t actually do anything.

I recently experienced an ‘Extreme Haunt’ where the actors can touch you, but you cannot touch them. You have to do everything the actor says to do and you must remain silent. I had a really hard time being put in these intense situations and having to remain a passive participant. I had no control over what was happening to me. I literally had to stand there and take whatever abuse came my way. To remain calm I had to continue to remind myself that it wasn’t real and that the actors could not actually hurt me. This took me out of the experience and it was no longer immersive.

Immersive theatre can also have these same errors. I recently did an immersive theatre show that you were not allowed to talk in, but the actors could talk to you, take you on a different path, and have an intimate one-on-one moment. I didn’t like it. Again, I had no choice. Actors would talk to me and give me this heart felt story that made me want to run up and give them a hug, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even talk to them. I had to just sit there and watch them go through this struggle while they reach out to me for help. The fourth wall was definitely blurred, but in the end I was just a moving audience member.

I understand that by putting an audience member in this passive situation makes them feel helpless. And maybe that is what they wanted to achieve. But I wanted more.

I can’t be the star of my own movie if I am a passive audience member. I need to be an active participant.

Next, the conversation turned to experiences that inspired us in the past and blew our mind. What popped into my head was Haunted Play’s Delusion.

Delusion is a theatrical experience in Los Angeles that was the first self-proclaimed immersive event. You and group of about 8-10 are lead throughout a real Victorian mansion in hopes to escape with your life, but each new room has its own risk and tasks. Someone needs to dance with a ghost to let us pass, another person is sent out on their own to collect a key, etc. Even though this experience is railroaded and there are no real choices, just the illusion of them, the play could not go on without an audience. This has been the best form of immersive entertainment that I have ever seen to this date.

Immersion is when a story cannot continue without its audience.

In the end I realized that I didn’t really know what immersion was because the idea of it kept changing the more we talked. No one person was right, but we also were not all wrong. I realized that if you took all the points that were made: a blurred division between actors and audience, turning passive audience members to active participants, and creating a world and story that can not continue without an audience, there is one thing that is true to all of them- Escape Rooms.

In an Escape Room the audience becomes the actors.

The Hex Room is more then just a game. It’s an experience. It’s a real life adventure. There are no actors in the room telling you what to do next or where you can or cannot go. Players are free to touch, move, and go wherever they want. The fourth wall is gone. The design of The Hex Room splits people into different rooms where they are physically separated from the rest of their team forcing them to be active participants, and not just stand around and watch as other people step in. In any escape room experience the story cannot continue without its audience. There are things that need to be done, worlds that need to be saved, and someone must step up to the challenge. Before The Hex Room begins, we cast you as stereotypical horror movie characters: Jock, rebel, prom queen, virgin, nerd, or Detective. Players get costume pieces and become the actors in their own real life horror film, with their own fate in their hands.

I believe escape rooms are just stepping stones for what is to come. There are big ideas that I am sure are already being developed that will take this level of immersion to the next step. After hearing from the minds behind escape rooms, Disney, Universal, Fox, and Marvel it’s clear to everyone that fans love immersive entertainment and we look forward to creating whatever that might mean.

What does immersion mean to you? Leave us a comment with your definition or let us know of your favorite immersive experience.

Madison Rhoades
CEO, Co-Owner, and Creative Director
Cross Roads Escape Games