Escape room video game

Origin

The text adventure Behind Closed Doors, where a player is stuck in a restroom, is an early example of escape-room video games. Myst (1993) introduced clicking and dragging items to interact with its world. The term "escape room game" comes from the 2001 game MOTAS, though older point-and-click examples like Noctropolis and earlier text adventures exist.

Structure

In a typical escape room video game, the player sees the world from a first-person viewpoint and clicks on objects to do things with them. The story is usually minimal, often just a short text scene at the start explaining how the character got trapped, and maybe another at the end. The game’s design tends to be simple, with a clean interface, background music that sets a mood, and no other characters to talk to, which helps create a feeling of being alone.

During play, the player clicks on objects to either use them or pick them up and put them in an inventory. When the mouse moves over the screen, the cursor often changes—like turning into a hand or a different arrow—to show that an object can be used, opened, moved, taken, searched, or that a door can be followed. However, some games do not give these hints. If an object cannot be taken or used, the player is usually just looking at it, and a short text description appears.

The main goal is to gather items and combine them with other objects or inventory items to figure out a way to leave the room. Some games require solving multiple rooms one after another. Others involve a lot of pixel hunting, where the player must carefully scan the screen for tiny clickable spots, which can be annoying. For instance, critic Brad Gallaway noted about the PSP game Crimson Room Reverse that important items are often hidden behind other items, and the player has no way to know those areas exist or that they can be searched unless the cursor lands on a very precise spot, sometimes just a few pixels wide.