It's a book about escape rooms and it's pretty interesting. I came at the book as someone who knows plenty about puzzle hunts and some things about puzzles and has picked up a fair amount of immersive entertainment shenanigans…but while escape rooms can use those things, they use plenty of other bits also, so I learned about those. This book starts out with a pretty good history of people-traveling-to-amusing-sites. E.g. growing up, I'd thought it strange that most amusement parks had admission gates but anyone could just blunder into Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk; this book told me about the lineages(?) of different kinds of amusement parks. (You'd think I would have picked this up, since I learned bits of Disneyland history while seeking inspiration for theme park-themed puzzlehunt puzzles, but I didn't think to research what came before Disneyland and I now realize that I was overlooking some interesting bits.) This book is not just history and background—there are codes to try, puzzle types to know, locks you might encounter and on and on. Even when I thought I knew plenty about a subject, I still picked up useful bits. E.g., I've had trouble trying to use those "directional" (up, down, left, right) padlocks. It turns out I'm not the only one—they're just plain finicky. There's a list of recommended play-at-home "rooms" to try. There's… There's plenty of good stuff here. If you're into escape rooms a little or a lot, you'll find something new here.
Tags: puzzle scene book
