Chances are you've heard of escape rooms before. Maybe you've even played one before. When
we heard that Nashville-based The Escape Game was using SketchUp to design their escape
rooms, we decided we had to come check them out. And maybe try to escape from a room ourselves.
We get to go through their 'Spec Ops' room. Which is, well, it feels like I'm in Morocco
the setting is in a Moroccan spice market. It's smells like spices, and I can't identify
exactly what it is. There are sounds of traffic and stuff moving around. I'm excited, not
just to play the room, but to be here and experience all this. I know I'm not in a mine
right now, but I can't help but feel like I could be. Nothing happened. Hey, guys? Aw.
So we're here in The Escape Game's production and design center. We're going to actually
see how they use SketchUp to design their games. Let's go. Hey, how's it going? Hi,
how are you? I was told I was coming to talk to you about your designs in SketchUp. We
use SketchUp to design our stores and our games. This is a lot of SketchUp for one guy.
When you go in and design, its not just, "here's a layout," or, "here's how someone is going
to walk through a room." You're literally designing everything. SketchUp allows us to
really start to think about the 3D - 3dimensional - world and being able to pull in an image
off the internet and drop it into SketchUp, is such an easy flow. I mean it sounds like
this sets you guys apart from other places that make escape rooms. You're going to, in-house,
build everything. That's got to be like a dream come true as a designer. Definitely.
Design constraints? Eh. Exactly! We start from a couple of snippets of images that show
the feel of the place we want it to look like. We're able to show this picture to scenic
teams and eventually sculpt these vines and all of the scenic areas. We're able to 3d
print to production and to all of components that are necessary. Going through Endscape
VR with the SketchUp model has got to be a great way to let people actually feel what
it's like, rather than just looking at a plan and going, "Yeah that's going to feel cramped"
or "That's going to feel open." I mean, before we even spend a dime on construction or even
starting to order materials, we want to see how it feels. We want to make sure that the
space and the layout are right. We basically take these designs from our production designers,
and we can walk through there, but they have drawings for all of the components that we
have built. And then, once those are drawn, they send them to the shop and they produce
them in our warehouse. And this is where the magic happens. Almost everything here at The
Escape Game is built in-house. They can handle anything. From something as simple as a window
or a wall, to more specialized pieces like bank vaults, paintings, roads or trees. Basically,
if they can think it, they can design it, and they can build it. A typical flow is as
follows: they go from materials to manufacturing, decoration and paint to R&D, to tech, and,
finally, shipping. All of the pieces are built in multiple sets to withstand maximum wear
and tear and usage by the general public. Once production wraps, they're sent to the
store locations for assembly. Here's a fun fact, The Escape Game team actually designed
their warehouse for maximum effectiveness using, you guessed it, SketchUp. I'm going
to hang out here and make some stuff. Hi Mark. How's it going? Good. My Role here at The
Escape Game is to head up the game development process. So I lead the team that designs and
prototypes the games. What sets The Escape Game apart from other escape rooms? So, we're
very mindful from the design process to any interaction that we have with guests. We want
to design a special experience for everyone. That is a lot of design considerations. I
mean, that's a lot of people to make happy with one product. You know, we'll walk through
the game mentally hundreds, probably thousands of times, and then we use tools, like SketchUp,
to visualize what it's going to look like. What we're trying to do is capture what's
the feel for the guest?" We want to be at the cutting edge with the things being done
in experiential entertainment. You know, the desires are not the heroes. We're making the
guest a hero. That's what gets us going. Well, Mark, thank you very much. Yeah! I appreciate
getting a change to talk with you. Thanks for coming out. Yeah, absolutely.