My most important lesson from the very beginning
When DarkPark opened one of the very first escape rooms in the Netherlands in 2013, there were no escape room fans yet. I still remember clearly how, after the first team came to test The Dentist, my heart sank completely. Nothing I had come up with had worked out the way it was meant to. Instead of 60 minutes, that poor team had been at it for well over 2 hours. They didn't understand any of the puzzles, which led to frustration for the players and panic for me. Right after they left, I would have loved nothing more than to grab a box of matches and burn the whole thing to the ground.
To my surprise, they still came out enthusiastic. They had never done anything like it and had no idea how long they had been inside. I decided to put the matches away and grab my notebook, which was filled to the margins. Everything had to change! I had 1.5 hours before the next team would arrive. Plenty of time to make adjustments.
That turned out to be a bit too ambitious of me, because after a few quick tweaks to one puzzle, they were already at the door. I braced myself for another good 2 hours of nail-biting.
After exactly 59 minutes, they were out. No frustration, nothing. Everything had gone exactly as it was designed. They found the puzzles logical, had a perfect game flow (a word that didn't even exist yet back then) and were wildly enthusiastic!
And that's how it stayed. If I had changed everything after my experience with the first team, I would have completely wrecked my original design. What luck that there hadn't been time for it.
The lesson I learned in those early days was that one experience is no more than that: one experience. That one experience is hugely valuable to that one person, and I'm sure I'll come back to that in another article, but it's unwise to throw your entire vision overboard based on a single experience or opinion. Only when several people run into the same thing is it time to take another hard look at your design.
Waves of escape room fans
When you open a new escape room, there are always waves in the kind of visitors who come by.
The first wave - escape room fans
The first wave is escape room fans. People who are dying to know what's new on the market and want to be the very first to experience it, so they can tell other escape room fans about it. These are experienced players who are often back outside well within the hour. If that's not the case, then as a designer you know you need to cut back seriously on the number of puzzles, because it's simply too much or too complicated. If players are out too quickly, though, there's no need to panic, because the next wave is about to arrive.
The second wave - word of mouth
The second wave is players who heard from their friends that it's great and bought a ticket because of it. These aren't always experienced players, and so a period of despair begins, because suddenly almost no team makes it to the end of the escape room within the available time. This is the period for subtle adjustments, so that different kinds of teams can have a good time in the escape room without frustration. You just have to be careful that the despair doesn't make you throw everything out radically, because the next wave is on its way.
The third wave - escape room lovers
The third wave is the escape room fans who know you have to give a room some time to mature. The teething troubles are gone, the game host has grown into the escape room, and often a few new effects have even been added. This is the moment to enjoy a room at its best, and this wave of escape room fans understands that. They come to enjoy. Maybe I should call this group of escape room fans "escape room lovers" instead.
For a builder, this is the best period. You're satisfied with what you've built, and the audience that comes by sees what you were trying to do and can appreciate it.
The fourth wave - horror fans
But then comes the fourth wave, when the horror fanatics come by. That only applies to scary escape rooms, of course, so the non-scary escape rooms can skip straight to the fifth wave. But hey, we're DarkPark, scary is our trademark, so we have to survive this wave first. Somewhere in the second wave, a team usually came by that loves new, thrilling experiences, and that team was so enthusiastic that they told all their friends, who are now at the door. These aren't puzzlers, these are people who want to scream, run around like headless chickens, cry with fear and then tell their Instagram followers afterwards that this is the scariest thing they have ever done. They're often lovely people who are hugely enthusiastic, but in their enthusiasm they also demolish half your escape room. What follows is a phase of lots of repairs and trying to make as much as possible "vandal-proof" (even more vandal-proof than you already had).
The fifth wave - everyone at once!
By now you're six months in and the room is starting to mature nicely. Now comes the fifth and final wave. Everyone at once. Experienced escape room fans alternate with escape room virgins and the over-enthusiastic horror wreckers, and the game hosts play it smartly. After all, they have seen it all at least once by now. This is the ultimate test. Is the escape room now fun, doable and sturdy enough for every type of player? Yes? Then a period follows of ever smaller waves of different kinds of players. No? Then you'd better get the hell to work!
DarkPark fans
In the beginning there were no escape room fans. You just had people who had played an escape room before and people who had never played one. Over time you also had people who had played quite a lot of escape rooms (sometimes as many as 100) and the odd one who had played more than 1000. What the F*!
And then one day I received the first message from someone who called themselves a DarkPark fan. Not just an escape room fan, no, a DarkPark fan! Again: What the F*!
The ultimate test
Ten years later, the news suddenly came that our building in Delft was going to be sold. The place where it all began in 2013 would disappear to make way for student housing. There was nothing I could do.
Or was there? This was the ultimate test. Over the years, hundreds of people had called themselves DarkPark fans. Could that growing group of loyal followers be the solution to our problem?
We started a crowdfunding campaign. At a nice interest rate, escape room fans could lend us their hard-earned savings in an attempt to buy the building ourselves, all together. The counter stood at 0. We had three months to raise a million euros. An impossible journey was about to begin.
The counter stood at 0. What had I been thinking? Escape room fans? DarkPark fans? We were just a little escape room, of course they weren't going to lend me their money.
The counter stood at 0. This was absurd. I had made a fool of myself. Everyone was probably sitting at home laughing their heads off at me. I had to pull the plug on this as fast as possible, or no one would ever take me seriously again!
By now I had been staring at the counter for a good 60 seconds, and it still stood at 0. 60 seconds! An eternity!
Ping! What was that sound? A first fan had invested money. In DarkPark. In me! Whaaat?!!
Ping. Another one! Ping, ping, two more!
For four weeks, the pings kept coming out of my computer. We had three months, but after just four weeks we had reached our goal. For the first time in history, an escape room had managed to raise a million euros through crowdfunding. One million euros! Had I already said What the F*?
The DarkVerse Family
DarkPark was saved! With the help of our fans, we had managed to buy the building. We never had to leave!
But that wasn't the biggest gift. Many of the people who entrusted me with their money also took the trouble to send me encouraging messages, generously sprinkled with the term "DarkPark fan". Some people took to the streets to hand out flyers for us, on their own initiative! People shared our campaign on social media and told their friends about it. Invested a second, third, sometimes even a fourth time. Everyone pitched in to reach that target and save DarkPark Delft from going under.
It felt like one big family of DarkPark fans. The DarkVerse Family, who wanted to express their ultimate faith in my company by flooding me with messages. I'm not exaggerating when I say that for weeks I did almost nothing but reply to messages from fans. Expressing my gratitude.
The future is Dark!
With The DarkVerse Family behind me, I see a grand future for DarkPark. I now know I'm not doing this alone. That we have an amazing team of employees at DarkPark, I already knew, but that we were carried by so many escape room fans was a heartwarming discovery.
The growing group of people who feel part of The DarkVerse Family are my reason to keep going, even when things get tough. Beautiful, special, kind, helpful people with their hearts in the right place. Escape room fans who have given DarkPark a warm place in their hearts, and in doing so have taken a special place in mine. People who give me the inspiration and motivation to keep building my dream, because it has long since stopped being just my dream and has become a dream more and more people have come to believe in. A dream bigger than rooms you have to escape from and puzzles you have to solve. A dream that gives people hope again in turbulent times. A dream that makes people feel special again, even though nobody pays attention to each other anymore since the rise of smartphones and social media. A dream of people, by people, for people. A dream in which you become the center of your own story again. You are the Story!
The future is Dark. But in this case, that's something very positive!
