When the coronavirus outbreak led to the shuttering of many businesses in Washington state and across the country, Puzzle Break co-founder Nate Martin lost the ability to do what his 7-year-old escape room company was created to do: bring people together.
A slow-motion nightmare in February that saw people starting to shy from public gatherings became a breakneck-speed nightmare, as Martin put it, by mid-March. Puzzle Break’s income went to zero and the company had to furlough all but a couple of its two dozen employees in Seattle.
Coronavirus Live Updates: The latest COVID-19 developments in Seattle and the world of tech
“After the initial shock wore off, it became, ‘OK, what, do we do?'” Martin said this week. “What we wanted to do was not just survive but try and pivot and even thrive with the tools and resources we had available to us.”
The move worked, and today Puzzle Break, the first U.S.-based escape room company, announced the launch of a new virtual escape experience. The intention is to take the challenge and team collaboration that has made escape rooms so popular — and turned Puzzle Break into a seven-figure company — and bring that experience online.
The pivot was very quick, and the first experience, called “The Grimm Escape,” was developed in just a few weeks. A soft launch has already been overloaded by demand as people who are stuck at home away from friends and co-workers look for more ways to gather with those people virtually.
“Now we’re bringing people back as quick as we can,” Martin said of his employees. “We’re really scrambling to kind of bring folks back and train them up on this experience because it’s clear that we need them.”
With its headquarters in Seattle and physical escape room locations in New York, Massachusetts and on Royal Caribbean cruise ships, Puzzle Break was also operating team-building escape room challenges for companies at offsites, retreats and corporate events.
Cruising along in that pre-COVID-19 world, Martin had no real plan to go virtual. The company was comfortable in its space. Now, tweaking existing designs and developing new ones for online experiences has the potential to be a bigger business than the physical locations the company was built around.
“We knew that there was a need for this as we’re all cooped up and we knew that the marketplace would respond,” Martin said. “But we didn’t know to the degree.”
With content that already lends itself to being played online, the virtual concept has the ability to scale in ways that physicality could not. Martin envisions a scenario where people don’t get on airplanes to build and lead escape rooms in New Hampshire or Texas. Instead, his team runs five different games at 10 a.m., and at 2 p.m. they come together to run a super event for a team in South Africa — all from the comfort of home.
“We have a global reach and I don’t have to send people globally,” he said.
RELATED: Geek of the Week: There’s no escaping it — Puzzle Break’s Nate Martin created his dream startup
In the virtual world, a team signs on for the new game and is greeted by an online guide who introduces the story, begins players on their journey, and provides hints to teams that require assistance. The game lasts an hour, and the entire experience with introduction and instruction lasts 90 minutes. Puzzle Break is using Zoom to start, with plans to expand to other platforms.
If escaping from the real world sounds pretty good right about now, Martin agrees with that sentiment.
While he hopes we can get back to a place as a society where we can get together with friends in the same physical space, he’s thrilled to be in a position to give people what they need right now.
“This is a nightmare for everyone. We’re all in this nonsense together and it’s not great,” Martin said. “The core business of what we do, accidentally or serendipitously, is bringing people together and making these connections that have always been nice to have and good for professional development.
“But now we need it,” he added. “We’re hungry for it as people.”
