How Scavenger Hunts Help Escape Rooms Grow

Escape rooms have taken the world by storm in the past decade, offering an immersive experience that challenges participants to solve puzzles, unlock mysteries, and ultimately escape within a set time limit. However, the love for escape rooms often goes hand-in-hand with another exciting adventure: scavenger hunts. Whether you’re an avid player or an escape room owner - you’re always looking for new activities and things to do. Building an escape room is quite expensive, so wouldn’t it be great to offer thrilling adventures in addition to your already-existing games?

The Thrill of Discovery

One of the most fundamental reasons escape room players enjoy scavenger hunts is the thrill of discovery. In both activities, participants are on a quest to find hidden objects, decipher clues, and piece together a larger puzzle. The adrenaline rush experienced when you stumble upon a critical clue or unlock a hidden compartment in an escape room is akin to the exhilaration of finding a well-hidden clue during a scavenger hunt.

Scavenger hunts are a real-world embodiment of exploration and adventure. Participants explore their surroundings, investigate intriguing locations, and often uncover treasures, all of which resonate with the same sense of accomplishment and intrigue that escape room players cherish. With Roamli you can customize your scavenger hunts with specific riddles and questions allowing groups to work together versus simply finding objects.

Creating New Experiences for Customers

It’s so important to have great relationships with other escape room owners or FEC’s in the area because the ER industry is extremely collaborative. We’ve spoken with dozens of owners who always refer their customers to other businesses in the area once their customers have played all their games. It takes a lot of time and money to build a new game, and many owners don’t have the luxury of closing down a room to build a new one. Instead, what if you could create an entirely new experience for your customers without needing to increase rent or staff?

Time Pressure

Escape room players thrive on the pressure of the ticking clock, with many rooms setting strict time limits for escape. Similarly, scavenger hunts often come with a time constraint, pushing participants to think on their feet and make quick decisions. With Roamli you have full control of your event from the duration, time, location, and challenges themselves. We’ve seen 2-3 hour scavenger hunts work the best as it creates an exciting, competitive environment for participating teams.

The time pressure in both activities adds an exciting dimension, as it forces participants to stay focused, maintain a sense of urgency, and work efficiently. This rush of adrenaline and the motivation to beat the clock are experiences shared by escape room players and scavenger hunt enthusiasts alike.

Unique Themes and Storytelling

Both escape rooms and scavenger hunts often incorporate engaging themes and storytelling. Escape room scenarios can range from ancient Egyptian tombs to futuristic space stations, while scavenger hunts may have historical, fantastical, or mystery-themed narratives. The imaginative aspects of these activities captivate participants' imaginations and immerse them in the experience.

Escape room players are drawn to scavenger hunts because they offer a different way to dive into intriguing stories, puzzles, and mysteries. The variety of themes and narratives in scavenger hunts keeps the experience fresh and exciting.

How Does it Work?

The love that escape room players have for scavenger hunts is rooted in the shared sense of adventure, problem-solving, teamwork, and storytelling that both activities provide. The thrill of discovery and the time pressure are additional factors that make scavenger hunts a natural extension of the escape room experience. Ultimately, these two activities complement each other, offering enthusiasts a diverse range of immersive challenges to enjoy.

We’ve partnered with companies like Lock Chicago Escape Rooms to help them offer year-round Scavenger Hunt experiences in addition to seasonal events like their Haunted Halloween Scavenger Hunt.

A significant majority of their customers have already played the 3 rooms they offer at their location, and they were looking for ways to engage their former customers and create new experiences. Unfortunately they weren’t able to rent any additional space at their current location so they were handcuffed in terms of being able to create new, physical rooms.

We found that their typical escape room had anywhere between 9-14 unique puzzles or challenges, so we wanted to replicate that in the form of an exciting, outdoor adventure. Customers were happy to partake in a 2-hour experience that led them throughout interesting sights, murals, and more in their cities. Some of the challenges were in the form of riddles looking for historic monuments or architecturally-significant landmarks.

After the first year - Roamli was able to help them bring in hundreds of new customers outside of their existing customer-base and leverage their prime location in Evanston as an interactive game! If you’re interested in learning more visit our Solutions Page and feel free to schedule a call - we’d love to hear from you!