Our game masters watch teams win and lose every single day. Same rooms, same clues, same sixty minutes – and yet some groups walk out with fifteen minutes to spare while others are still on the first lock at the half hour mark.

The difference almost never comes down to intelligence. It comes down to method. Here are the ten things our hosts wish every team knew before the door closed.

Before you play

1. Pick the right room for your group

Difficulty and fright level are two separate things. A room can be terrifying and simple, or calm and fiendish. Check both ratings before booking. If half your group has never played, do not start with our hardest scenario just because it looks the coolest.

2. Turn up early

We ask for 10 to 15 minutes before your slot because the briefing genuinely matters. Teams who rush in flustered spend the first five minutes catching up mentally. Teams who arrive relaxed start solving immediately.

3. Wear something sensible

Comfortable, loose clothing and trainers. Some scenarios involve crouching or squeezing, and all of them involve moving quickly in low light. Heels and open-toe shoes will cost you.

In the first ten minutes

4. Search everything, all at once

The single biggest time saver is a fast, thorough opening search. Split the room into zones and take one each. Open every drawer, look under everything, check the backs of frames. Do this before anyone tries to solve anything.

5. Pile your finds in one place

Create a central table or floor space for every item you discover. Half of all failed rooms fail because someone was holding the key in their pocket while four people looked for it.

6. Say everything out loud

Information kept in one person’s head is useless. “Three symbols on the wall here.” “Four-digit padlock on this cabinet.” Shout it. Someone else has the matching half.

In the middle stretch

7. Separate solved from unsolved

Once a clue has been used, move it to a discard pile. Nothing wastes more time than re-solving a puzzle you already cracked twenty minutes ago.

8. Do not brute force locks

If you are trying every combination on a four-digit padlock, you have already lost. Every lock in our rooms has a clue that belongs to it. If you cannot find it, the answer is somewhere you have not searched yet.

9. Take the hint

Pride is the number one killer of escape room teams. Our game masters watch the whole hour and know exactly where you are stuck. Asking at the eight-minute mark of being stuck is smart. Asking at the twenty-five minute mark is a wasted booking.

10. Do not let the actor break your brain

In our live actor scenarios, the character is designed to disrupt you. That is the point. The teams who win are the ones who keep one person solving while everyone else reacts. Panicking as a unit is fun for about four seconds and then it costs you the game.

What team size actually works best

Five is close to ideal for most of our rooms. Two is intense and slow but very achievable. Eight is fast if you organise and chaotic if you do not – with a group that size, appoint someone to hold the clue pile and keep track of what has been used.

Our scenarios run for teams of two to eight across a 60 minute clock, and every booking is private, so you are only ever playing with people you chose to bring. You can compare difficulty and fright ratings across [all our scenarios](https://www.horrorescape.co.uk/scenarios) before you decide.

The one thing nobody expects

Communication beats cleverness every time. We have watched groups of engineers lose rooms that groups of teenagers escaped with ten minutes spare, purely because the teenagers talked constantly and the engineers went quiet and worked alone.

If you take one thing into your game, take that.

Put the theory into practice

We run six live actor horror scenarios at 43 Peckham High Street in South London, ten minutes from Peckham Rye station, seven days a week. Prices, ages and timings are all on our [FAQs page](https://www.horrorescape.co.uk/faqs).

Gather your team, remember the ten rules and see whether you can beat the clock. [Book your scenario now](https://www.horrorescape.co.uk).