December is a month of great excitement every year. We have just learned about the best escape rooms in the world according to TERPECA's ranking. Learn about the history of this ranking and where is the best place to go for an escape room trip next year.
The ranking of the best escape rooms in the world was invented and launched by Rich Bragg in 2018. It is built on the opinions of experienced players from around the world. Thanks to the fact that there are some restrictions in accessing the reporting and voting of rooms, we are sure that the ranking of rooms around the world is decided by people who are very experienced in the industry. Rich has built an entire community around this ranking. He has acquired ambassadors in many countries who encourage as many people as possible to submit their votes. As a result, TERPECA's reach is expanding every year. His contribution to our industry is invaluable. I asked Rich a few questions about TERPECA.
Bartosz: Do you notice the real impact of TERPECA's results on the development of the industry and changing the behavior of escape room enthusiasts?
Rich: It's hard to know what the real impact is as far as the development of the industry, but the fact that I see the TERPECAs being casually mentioned more and more as a useful resource is certainly validation that the project is at least worthwhile. I have heard from a few companies that winning a TERPECA is a motivator for them in building a new room, and I also know plenty of enthusiasts (myself very much included) that plan their vacations around the rooms that finish highest, but I'm not sure how common either of those things are in the broader industry. After all, as well known as we are among some segments of the community, I still got a couple of companies that responded to the email we sent letting them know they'd been nominated with a request to be taken off our "spam list", so we surely still have a ways to go.
Bartosz: What changes have you made this year and why?
Rich: We made tons of changes this year, all in service of making the system better for all involved! We discontinued the Top Online Room category because there were very few new games in that category this year and much of the ones from last year had already closed. We reworked a bit how the nomination process works by dropping the nomination limit to 15 and making last year's winners automatically qualify, in order to raise the bar for quality and to decrease the time it takes in the nomination process. We increased the minimum number of rooms for applicant voters from 50 to 100, to reduce the load on our applicant reviewers and allow us to maintain high standards for who gets in and avoid fake accounts and people trying to game the system. We added tracking of horror levels and languages to help users look at the results and see which games they want to play. We launched How To videos for applying, nominating, and ranking to help users navigate the system. We made improvements to the ranking algorithm itself to make things more consistent within geographic regions and less susceptible to outlier opinions. Plus many other minor changes throughout the process... and there's even one more fairly big change that we'll be announcing in the show Saturday.
Bartosz: Will TERPECA ever go to the real world and be like the Oscars? Or do you prefer to stay fully online?
Rich: I have often daydreamed about a huge Oscar-like event in a real-world venue, but in practice, it doesn't seem super practical, given that the escape rooms we honor are all over the world, and sadly escape room owners don't typically have the travel budget or free time that movie stars do. So as cool as that would be, I think it's very likely we'll stay online for the foreseeable future.
During the live ceremony, this year's TERPECA winners were just announced. I am extremely pleased to announce that this year's top 5 places include rooms:
You can see the full results at https://terpeca.com/
Lockme co-funder
Escape room enthusiast with over 550 visited rooms. Co-founder of escape room marketplace lock.me, escape room board games series Escape Tales and Escape Room World Championship Er Champ. In his spare time guitar player and lover of psychedelic progressive rock.
Hey fellow escapists and adventure seekers! If you’ve been following along with our RV trip around North America, you know that we've just wrapped it up with a whopping 282 escape rooms played! You heard that right – 282!
World Escape Room Championship attracts thousands of players every year. Last year's contest's finals were held in Wroclaw, Poland. Recently, the organizers announced the start of preparations for the next edition. What is already known about ER Champ 2024?
