What is Side Quest Escape Games?
Side Quest Escape Games is a project started by Emmy-winning production designer, Tyler B. Robinson, who wanted to test an idea; could an escape game have social and educational value beyond just being a fun cooperative game and team-building experience? Could a valuable lesson or practical skill be taught through the process of solving puzzles in an escape room?
Wanting to test that idea, Tyler started Side Quest Escape Games to combine his enthusiasm for escape games with his skill as a set designer. The core values that would guide his escape game design decisions are:
Create an entertaining yet educational escape game.
Create meaningful and thematic puzzles that teach practical skills.
Increase emergency preparedness awareness.
Create interactive entertainment and immersive set design.
With these core values in mind, Tyler’s new project, Side Quest Escape Games, set out to bring an entirely new escape game experience to the Pacific Northwest.
What is Shaky Grounds Cafe?
A week ago, a disaster shook the entire Pacific Northwest from Northern California all the way up into Canada. The Cascadia subduction zone earthquake we had been casually preparing for was as terrible as they said it would be. Tsunamis destroyed the entire coast and the bridges connecting them collapsed, creating isolated community islands cut off from the rest of the state. Here, in Portland, we took a hit as well. The unreinforced masonry buildings downtown and throughout the inner eastside crumbled. The bridges connecting downtown to the east side as well as those heading North into Vancouver failed, stranding 10’s of thousands of people between work and home. The tank farm (CEI - Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub) in Northwest Portland is an ongoing disaster with fuel and fire filling the river and spewing noxious and deadly gasses into the wind. The airport, which was built on a liquefaction zone, became unusable. Rail lines became impassible, and with most highways into the city relaying on bridges, we too began to feel like an isolated island cut off from the rest of the world.
And although you have no running water, electricity, natural gas, or operational sewers, it’s not ALL bad.
At least your home, as well as the others in your neighborhood, were built on solid bedrock and remain standing. You were even moderately prepared with the 72 hour go bag you bought on Amazon after watching all those zombie shows but you quickly realize that 72 hours is an instant in the wake of 9.0 disaster, especially when you begin to realize that the emergency efforts you thought would rush in and and save you are being focused on the communities most severely hit, of which there are many. Outside help for you and your immediate neighborhood is still a ways off… but you need supplies now and the stores that are still standing have been empty for a week now.
You and your neighbors have an idea, the neighborhood coffee shop should be sure to have something you can salvage! Your neighbor Sarah owns the Shaky Grounds Cafe, which she boarded up immediately after the quake before evacuating her family’s ranch back east. Before she left, Sarah told you that if things got bad enough, you were free to borrow supplies from the shop.
Things have gotten bad enough.
Shaky Grounds Cafe is the first escape room of its kind. It’s a fun and engaging escape game that teaches players lifesaving skills and all in a mobile trailer.
An escape game (also commonly referred to as an escape room) is a live action, cooperative puzzle game with a story and a goal. Typically, players will enter a themed game room and try to solve a series of puzzles within a given time (often 1 hour) to try to meet an objective and complete the game. Traditionally, a group of players reserves a time slot at an escape room facility where the group will meet to play the game during their reserved hour. What we’ve done at Side Quest Escape Games is build that game into a mobile trailer which can be driven to your location. It’s an excellent activity for a workplace team building exercise, a unique party centerpiece or an organized community event.
The game is built inside of an insulated, temperature-controlled 30’ trailer and has an 8’ ceiling that helps mitigate any sense of ‘boxiness’ or ‘being inside a trailerness’. We can be self-powered with our generator, but for a quieter experience, we prefer to plug into one of your outlets if available.
But to answer the question of what we are, it might be easiest to tell you what we are not.
The object of a traditional escape room game is to solve a series of puzzles to figure out how to get out of a locked room. Because of that goal, many early escape rooms wrapped their game in a theme of being trapped or captured and having to escape from somewhere that was usually creepy. It easily conjured up images of the Saw movie franchise and triggered many people’s claustrophobia, which turned many off to the idea of escape rooms altogether.
Thankfully, the escape room community as a whole is moving away from those played-out tropes and focusing on more quest-based games that feel more like a mini-adventure. Unfortunately, escape rooms are still trying to shake the stigma of being viewed as a haunted house-type attraction. And although Shaky Grounds Cafe is about emergency preparedness set in a post-disaster scenario, there are no horror themes, no jump scares, and you are NEVER locked inside. You are always free to come and go as you please.
Ummm…
I think you misunderstood the question. Like, what EXACTLY is it?
Ah, I see. But how does it work? Walk me through what I can expect.
If you are a small group and simply want to play the escape game, your best (and most affordable) option is to follow us and book a time slot at one of our Pop-Up locations.
If you would like the escape room trailer to come to your location, you can start now by completing a booking request. Once that request is received someone at Side Quest Escape Games will contact you to discuss the specifics of your event and how we can tailor the experience to meet your goals. We will also discuss some logistics including:
Trailer Parking. We may be able to do this remotely using google maps, but this could require scheduling a preliminary site visit to confirm that the truck and trailer will be able to land where you would like it.
Electricity. Should we plan on using a generator or is it possible to draw power from your location.
Bathrooms. In short, we don’t have one, but we could help arrange for one if you require it.
On your game day, the truck and trailer will arrive about an hour before your scheduled first game. This should give us ample time to get parked, powered up, and set up. When your event time begins, a game master will meet with you at a predetermined location. This could be someplace of your choosing or we can simple gather outside the game trailer. The game master will brief you on what to expect and give you some tips and any specific information that you need to know about the game. There will be time to answer any final questions before the GM starts your 1 hour game clock and returns to their control room where they will monitor your progress through video feeds. They will not be in the room with you.
You and your group will be tasked with solving puzzles to meet a goal and you will have 1 hour to achieve victory. The puzzles will require teamwork, communication, and keen observation. You will be making logical connections within the game space and taking in environmental clues to learn what the puzzles are and what needs to be done to solve them. Remember, communication is key! Our puzzles aren’t mathy and hopefully they wont feel like homework. If the puzzles do feel too obtuse or too much like homework, please let us know so we can change that. Our goal is for you to have fun and learn something about emergency preparation, not bury your nose in busy calculations.
Upon completion of your 1 hour game, we will offer you a debriefing of your experience where a qualified emergency preparedness instructor will lead a discussion on some of the lessons learned and how to use them in your own life. They will offer tips, answer questions, hand-out materials, and direct you to on-line resources (available here) to help you in your new quest for personal emergency preparation.
Ok, but how many of us can fit in this trailer of yours?
Like many escape room games, we believe our game is best enjoyed with 4-6 players, but it could accommodate up to 8 if that is important to you. If you have groups larger than 6-8, we suggest breaking them into a few smaller teams and running them through the experience individually. Much of the cost of booking our game trailer is related to transportation costs to and from your event, so once we are set up at your location we can run multiple game sessions back-to-back at a lower hourly rate than than initial booking quote.
It’s important to us that everyone who plays our escape game has a great and memorable experience and we will do our best to find workable solutions to maximize your game experience rather than trying to cram a larger group through all at once. There are a few different ways we can accomplish this and we can discuss those options during your booking process.