" Horror is the excitement of the unknown." It's dark all around you. You clutch your flashlight with trembling hands, but the beam of light blinds you when it hits a wall of fog. In the swirling mist ahead, eerie creatures wander the grounds between you and your goal. You must use your knowledge of the inhabitants of this place to save yourself and your friends. Welcome to Lockhill. Bill Dalitsikas, owner of Lockhill Escape Game in Athens, Greece, is the master of horror, when it comes to escap...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 9Ep. 12
" Challenging yourself is how you produce growth in your own life." Countless late nights, occasional tears, and many great conversations later, we did it. We made it to 100 episodes of REPOD! We've had so many incredible guests come on the show, fully willing to share the secret sauce to their success. These guests have been a treasure trove of creative inspiration. From discussing how to create immersive sets, to tricks for directing a player's attention, from how to effectively market your bu...
Jun 24, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 9Ep. 11
"It's the first science-based escape room." If you ask an escape room enthusiast about entanglement puzzles, what likely springs to mind are those intertwined, bent metal nails that you need to separate. However, for Paul Kwiat, an entanglement puzzle is something else completely. Professor Kwiat is an acclaimed physicist, specializing in quantum physics, including quantum entanglement, along with quantum cryptography, dense-coding, quantum teleportation, entanglement distillation, and most rece...
Jun 17, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 9Ep. 10
When Miss Jezebel first debuted, no one had really ever seen anything like it before. It incorporated an actor into the gameplay in a way that felt more akin to larp or interactive theater. For those in the right mindset, it was uproariously funny. It was also screamingly vulgar, with adult props that would make a bachelor party blush. It was an instant darling of the Los Angeles escape room scene. Brian Corbitt, creator of Miss Jezebel, joins us in his second appearance on the Spoilers Club for...
Jun 15, 2025•7 min
"It was like a laser tag basement with Party City decorations." Escape rooms? What are those? Well, it says here that you're locked in a room, and if you can't solve the puzzles fast enough, a zombie will get you! According to Trip Advisor, it's the top rated activity in the city. The year is 2014. Amanda Harris has just discovered her first escape room... and her life was changed forever. Since that fateful day, she has gone on to play well over 1,700 escape rooms. She is currently one of the m...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 9Ep. 9
"Once it clicks, you have sweet epiphany." In the dingy dark hallway of an asylum or prison, two men are struggling in a battle of life or death. One man is writhing on the ground while the other has something wrapped around his throat. The art is captivating and gothic, verging on grotesque, and they're animated in an unsettling way. The movement suggests a moment caught in time. We, as investigators, are tasked with uncovering the sequence of events behind this story. The Rise of the Golden Id...
Jun 03, 2025•54 min•Season 9Ep. 10
"It's not about the size of the room, it's about the richness of the details." Whether you're making new robot friends, investigating a haunted school, or cooking up some puzzles, the escape rooms at Omescape Sunnyvale are all absolute bangers. Omescape Sunnyvale is a rare gem in the escape room world. Their games are all massive (or feel massive) with gorgeous sets, chock-full of puzzles, and oftentimes with unique mechanics. They're all telling different stories with different styles of gamepl...
May 27, 2025•59 min•Season 9Ep. 7
" It's a quirky and complex puzzle." In the sleepy town of Ravenswood Bluff, on the stroke of midnight during a hellish thunderstorm, you hear a scream. You all rushed to the town square to find that your beloved storyteller has been murdered! This is the work of a nefarious demon... a demon that kills by night and takes on human form by day. Blood on the Clocktower is a game of lies and truth, team building and betrayal, and a game of secret identities. It is also, in our opinion, the best soci...
May 20, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 9Ep. 6
“Creating the escape room becomes the escape room.” New York City is REPOD co-host David Spira's home market. Whenever he's recommending escape rooms to guests and visitors, his favorite go-to is MyssTic Escape Rooms in Brooklyn, NY. Two of their escape rooms have won Golden Lock awards: Ghost Light , and their newest game, The Bird . Gara Roda and Moritz Marti, the co-founders of MyssTic Rooms, join us today on REPOD to talk about the challenges of building a world class escape room in bustling...
May 13, 2025•59 min•Season 9Ep. 5
Chris Alden, owner of Palace Games, joins us to share some true stories about chance meetings between Houdini and Teddy Roosevelt, and how this ties into the story of The Roosevelt Room. He tells us about how the progression of the game is meant to mimic the arc of wartime: from the romanticization of war propaganda to the brutal reality of the trenches. When you support Room Escape Artist on Patreon at $15 per month (or above), you get access to the Spoilers Club, our exclusive podcast where ho...
May 10, 2025•6 min
"Hiding interesting objects in plain sight is a hallmark of Great Gotham Challenge." In New York, everyone’s got a story. A gimmick. A hustle. The city’s crawling with characters. Some are just colorful. Others... well, others are part of something bigger. A secret. A puzzle. That hot dog vendor on the corner? A whispered password might just grant you access to a secret underground lair. You never really know if someone’s just being New York... or if you're already inside the game. Capturing thi...
May 06, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 9Ep. 4
In fact, over the course of the interview, Eric often came back to the importance of finding your inspiration. His two most well-received games were both conceived when an inspiration "lit a fire inside (of him)." He also very candidly tells us about losing that inspiration while in the process of playtesting The Dome, and how he needed to step away to regain a fresh perspective. This worked, because David tells us that there was a marked difference in players' reception to the game in the very ...
Apr 29, 2025•55 min•Season 9Ep. 3
" Am I really playing with Neil Patrick Harris?" In keeping with the theme of Box Two, Neil Patrick Harris is back for his second appearance on our podcast. And not only that, he also brought a friend. Jonathan Bayme, CEO of theory11, is a longtime collaborator and Neil's bestie. They first met at a magic show Jonathan created for the Nomad Hotel in New York. Neil and Jonathan quickly bonded over a shared passion for elevating the art of magic, a deep appreciation for fine craftsmanship, and cre...
Apr 22, 2025•1 hr 33 min•Season 9Ep. 2
" An outlandish approach to meta puzzles" "Congratulations and Condolences" is the default phrase when a team of puzzlers has just won the vaunted MIT Mystery Hunt. This is because according to tradition, the winning team must write next year's Mystery Hunt. This daunting task was recently undertaken by Death and Mayhem, the team that wrote the 2025 MIT Mystery Hunt titled "The Case of the Shadow Diamond." At the helm of this illustrious team is James Douberley, affectionately dubbed the Benevol...
Apr 15, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 9Ep. 1
In one of our between seasons Patreon exclusive episodes, Rich Bragg and Dan Egnor joined us to share some of the wilder experiences they had playing escape rooms in Beijing, China. If you want to hear more, become a Room Escape Artist patreon member at the $5 level or higher. Join now and support all of our work at patreon.com/roomescapeartist
Apr 09, 2025•7 min•Season 8Ep. 18
A few months ago, David was interviewed by Corey and Helena on the ESCAPUZZLED Podcast, a UK-based show that interviews folks from around the escape room world. They talked about Room Escape Artist, Reality Escape Pod, and covered a wide variety of topics. If you want to hear David pontificating, this is him at his most self-indulgent. If you'd like to hear more of Corey and Helena's work, check out their show....
Mar 18, 2025•1 hr 15 min
In this clip, Lisa and David share their truly wild experience of visiting the outdoor escape rooms of Escape Woods. Listen to the Whole Episode: When you support Room Escape Artist on Patreon at $15 per month (or above), you get access to the Spoilers Club, our exclusive podcast where hosts David Spira and Peih-Gee Law chat in depth with creators about iconic escape rooms... spoilers and all!
Mar 14, 2025•5 min
Let's revisit most interesting, entertaining, and impactful moments from REPOD Season 8. Can't wait for the next season REPOD? Don’t worry, Season 9 of the podcast will be back in the very near future. To pass the time until then, have a listen to some memorable clips our editor Steve Ewing selected from each episode of Season 8. And there's a bonus clip from the brand new show PG's Playhouse! It’s perfect for new listeners of this podcast or fans who want to relive their favorite moments. This ...
Feb 25, 2025•1 hr 20 min•Season 8Ep. 17
A few months ago, Lisa and David played Ghost Light at Myss Tic in Brooklyn, NY, with Eric Molinsky, host of the podast Imaginary Worlds. Eric has been a long time immersive theater and larp fan, but he had yet to be sold on escape rooms. They were convinced that he (like so many others!) just hadn’t had the opportunity to experience what great escape rooms have to offer - so they pitched him on doing an escape room episode. What he made was a beautiful exploration of the escape room world. We a...
Feb 20, 2025•37 min
We're sharing one of our many Patreon exclusive Bonus Shows. We put a lot of love and have a ton of fun continuing the conversation after each episodes. We also record many extra episodes in-between seasons. All of this is available exclusively to our Patrons at patreon.com/roomescapeartist. Curtis Ratliff and Derek Townsley join us for more discussion about The Escape Ventures. They share an absolutely outrageous escape room story that we couldn’t put on the main feed. We talk more about game s...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Terry Pettigrew Rolapp and Tommy Wallach of Hatch Escapes in Los Angeles, California joined us to talk about their overwhelmingly ambitious game, The Ladder. In this clip, we talk about the genesis of The Ladder, and the design philosophy behind this game, exploring the nature of difficulty. You can find the rest of this Spoilers Club episode by supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com/roomescapeartist
Jan 23, 2025•12 min
We're trying something new and doing a throwback episode. Season 1, Episode 4 was an early darling amongst REPOD listeners. Guests Anne and Chris Lukeman of CU Adventures were such delightful guests. Back then, neither David nor Peih-Gee had played their in person games (but they loved their digital and tabletop games). Since then, David has gone to Champaign-Urbana, and fell further in love with their work. With that in mind, Room Escape Artist is hosting Escape Immerse Explore: Time & Spac...
Jan 14, 2025•46 min
This is the final preview for PG's Playhouse being released on the Reality Escape Pod feed. Please go subscribe to PG's Playhouse wherever you get your podcasts to listen to future episodes. What's a roadtrip without a visit to that Giant Ball of Twine or a glimpse of a giant Muffler Man? If the sign says "World Famous" anything, I'm pulling over for it. Our guests today are Anne & Chris Lukeman, owners of CU Adventures in Time and Space, an escape room company in Illinois. They love roadsid...
Jan 12, 2025•27 min
In between Reality Escape Pod Season 8 and 9 we are starting a brand new show. PG's Playhouse. Remember Y2K? The end-of-the-world that came and went without a hitch? Guest Tommy Honton joins us again to explore what really went down in this episode of PG's Playhouse. Our game today is called New Beginnings, where we take the names of old fads and transform them into something new by changing the first letter. David then walks us through a short history of Y2K, the fear mongering about a global s...
Dec 31, 2024•24 min
Wizard's Treasure designer Grant Leucke joins us to take a deep dive into his design philosophies, he talks to us about how he built this game. In this clip, we talk about the importance of testing and maintaining your games. You can find the rest of this Spoilers Club episode by supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com/roomescapeartist
Dec 26, 2024•5 min
In between Reality Escape Pod Season 8 and 9 we are starting a brand new show. PG's Playhouse. In the inaugural episode of PG's Playhouse, Peih-Gee Law and David Spira are joined by immersive creator Tommy Honton to explore the controversial topic of whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie. We kick off with a game called "Christmas-fied" where non-Christmas movies are transformed into Christmas-themed titles by adding festive song lyrics. We also discuss Die Hard's Christmas credentials, and its t...
Dec 24, 2024•25 min
This week, we're joined again by episode guest Victor and Francine from Sherlocked in the Netherlands. They tell us about the escape room they built for Hotel Zoku during the pandemic, and we also explore outdoor escape room style adventures, what to call them, and some logistics to consider when designing them. We also talk about escape room tour logistics, especially when it comes to a potential Netherlands Tour. Finally, Victor and Francine talk about an at home escape room design kit that ma...
Dec 20, 2024•7 min
“A vision into the future of what I want escape rooms to be.” After 1,200 escape rooms, it certainly takes something remarkable to capture the #1 spot on David Spira’s list of favorite games. As he tells us in this episode, his favorite game shifts from moment to moment, but in this particular moment, that game is The Alchemist, created by Francine Boon & Victor van Doorn of Sherlocked Escape Rooms in Amsterdam. David had this to say about The Alchemist: “It's a wonder factory. It is filled ...
Dec 17, 2024•59 min•Season 8Ep. 12
In this Bonus Show, we're joined again by guest Sarah Dodd. We cover a whole range of escape room topics, including well-crafted small scale escape rooms, whether we should introduce more categorization in escape room awards, and we also talk about taxonomy and the jargon of escape rooms. In this preview, we talk about designing for neurodivergent friendly escape rooms and the importance of accessibility options If you enjoy these previews, I hope you’ll consider joining our Patreon . For only $...
Dec 13, 2024•7 min
“Finding escape rooms has been finding my community and my joy.” When people find out I’ve played 400 escape rooms, they react with awe and wonder, to which my usual response is “That’s nothing—my podcast co-host David Spira has played over 1,200 escape rooms!” However, as it turns out, even David is not the final boss when it comes to the most escape rooms played. Enter Sera Dodd, who alongside her partner Sharan Gill, is one of the most experienced escape room players in the Western world. Clo...
Dec 10, 2024•1 hr 16 min•Season 8Ep. 11
