Those who follow the Southern California escape room scene know Cross Roads Escape Games. Their “Hex Room” is consistently voted one of the best rooms in the southland, and the married duo behind the company — Luke and Madison Rhoades — are considered innovators in the field.
Innovation is exactly what they have up their sleeves with their latest endeavor The Psych Ward, which pits players against each other in a point-based game of trust and betrayal. The game’s structure means that players who get a kick out of the game can come back and have an entirely different outcome since how you play is the key.
We spoke with Madison Rhoades about the new game via the mystery of email.
No Proscenium: You refer to this as “new and unusual point-based strategy escape game” — what does point-based strategy escape game even mean?!?!?!
Madison Rhoades: It means exactly what it sounds like! The Psych Ward is a combination of immersive theatre, strategy board game, and escape room elements. Unlike a normal escape room where you have to solve every puzzle in the room and escape in under in hour, in this game you always have the full hour and can complete as many or as few challenges as you need in order to win. The points are there to help the two teams see how they are performing.
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NP: You have a reputation for innovating on the mechanics of an escape room… and this here seems to break the genre entirely. Did you set out to break the mold when you started this design?
MR: We did! Three years ago, when we made The Hex Room, we were already trying to change up what was considered “normal” for an escape room. Since then, Luke and I have played over 200 escape rooms together and every game, whether it was escaping jail or robbing a bank, seemed to be the same. Escape Rooms created a beautiful way of engaging audiences and giving them agency, which we loved, but we knew it could be taken further. We wanted to push what could be done and show people that escape rooms can be about more than just escaping.
NP: Why a psych ward theme?
MR: It’s a mind game. It is about trust and betrayal, and the paranoia it causes makes everyone feel a bit insane themselves. A Psychiatric Hospital just seemed perfect. We also were able base all the puzzles off psychological tests and experiments, so nothing seems out of place.
Learn more about The Psych Ward on the Cross Roads Escape Games site.
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