Team building in an escape room

An escape room works well for team building when the goal is to have fun and talk together, and the group can be split into teams of a few people. It won’t work as a hidden employee assessment. In Krakow, larger groups should compare three formats: escape rooms in one venue, an outdoor city game played on tablets, and a mobile escape room that comes to your office or hotel. The choice comes down to headcount, where you’re meeting, and whether the team wants to get out into the city.

An escape room gives colleagues a new, shared task. People who mostly know each other from messages and meetings get to see how they search for clues together, explain their ideas and react to a mistake.

Which format should you choose?

• Escape rooms in one venue. Good when you want to play whatever the weather and the group fits into a few teams. Gamescape welcomes companies from 11 people at its venue at ul. Kościuszki 74, splits the group into teams and also runs games in English.
• A city game on tablets. Good for a big group that wants to spend time outdoors. In EscapeCity’s city games, a group of 10 or more splits into teams of 4 to 6, each team gets an iPad with the app and internet access, and the game lasts from one and a half to two and a half hours. Starting points include Kazimierz, the Old Town and Zwierzyniec, and at the finish the results of all teams are announced straight away.
• A mobile escape room. Good when team building is part of a conference or trip and you don’t want to go anywhere. With EscapeCity’s mobile escape room, Game Masters set up the game in a conference room, hotel or restaurant. There are short modules of 10 to 30 minutes and full scenarios of 60 to 90 minutes.
• A distributed team. If some people work remotely, EscapeCity also runs online team building.

Communication you can actually see

During the game, information is often spread across the players. Someone finds an object, someone else remembers a matching bit of a message. To complete the task, you have to connect these discoveries. A clear “I’ve got a symbol like the one on the map” helps more than just shouting that you’ve found something.

Not every team shares information straight away. Sometimes two people solve most of the puzzles and the rest drop out of the conversation. Encourage everyone to show what they’ve found and briefly explain their answers, without imposing fixed work roles.

Trust without a test

Working together means accepting that someone might test a different idea. It’s a chance to see how the group reacts to uncertainty. But one game won’t automatically fix conflicts or measure the level of trust in a company.

Before the event, tell participants clearly what it’s for. If it’s meant to be team building, don’t create individual assessments afterwards based on how people behaved in the room. Familiarity with games, reading speed and how someone feels on the day can have a big impact on how they take part. For the same reason, don’t pick a harder game to test the team’s resilience. There’s no single market definition of difficulty, so it’s better to tell the operator whether the teams have played before and ask them to match the scenario.

Test ideas, don’t win the argument

Puzzles give you a chance to test hypotheses. When one person suggests how to read a clue, others can help find confirmation or spot a contradiction. That kind of exchange is more interesting than a fight over whose idea gets adopted.

Imagine two parts of the team have given the same sign different meanings. A quick comparison of sources can clear up the discrepancy faster than carrying on in isolation. It’s an example of communication you can discuss later without judging specific people.

Organising a larger group

Start with a few questions before you ask for a quote:

• How many people are coming, and does everyone speak Polish? Both operators also run games in English, and EscapeCity for companies can prepare other languages on request.
• Can everyone walk a few kilometres and spend two hours outdoors? If not, go for escape rooms or the mobile version.
• Does anyone struggle with tight spaces or dark stories? Some rooms have warnings about narrow passages on their cards, and some scenarios are crime stories. Choose a theme that suits the whole group. Collect information about mobility or health needs so that everyone can share it privately with the organiser, not in front of the team.
• What if it rains? EscapeCity says light rain doesn’t stop a city game, and in extreme weather it offers another date or an indoor scenario.
• How much time is left for a shared finale? With many teams, a finish with results and a short chat takes extra time.

If teams play in different rooms, don’t treat their times as a fair ranking. The tasks and conditions aren’t identical. When all teams play the same city game scenario, a shared scoreboard is more comparable.

Before the event, gather the date, the team line-ups, the rules for changing them and the plan for after the game in one place. Give participants the arrival time, directions and a note on what to wear, especially before an outdoor game. Gamescape recommends arriving 10 to 15 minutes before the start (FAQ on the escape rooms page), so the meeting time should be earlier than the game time.

A short chat after the game

You can ask three questions: what helped us share information, when did we lose the shared picture, and what will we do more simply next time? You don’t need a long training session. If a moderated discussion or workshop is planned after the game, agree its purpose, facilitator and length in advance. Having a Game Master there doesn’t mean you’re getting a training service or an employee assessment: it’s a different role from a trainer’s. A few specific observations are enough to bring everyone back to the shared experience.

If participants would rather talk about the funny plot twists, that’s a successful team-building finale too. Not every outing has to end with a list of professional takeaways.