Dynamic Duos: Escape Games and the Power of Two

The first Vancouver escape games opened in late 2013, which means Vancouverites have had more than two years to fashion themselves into escape room superstars. If you’re one of these escape game connoisseurs, have you ever thought about how to give yourself a greater challenge? What about scaling down your team? Think you could pull off the solve with just two people?

Generally speaking, the more people you have playing an escape room, the more brainpower you’ve got to help decipher all the clues. But sometimes, less is more. After all, there are plenty of mystery-solving duos who pull it off all the time.

Below we look at some of the greatest mystery-solving duos out there, and examine what it is that makes them such a great team. 

1. Sherlock and Watson

Where we would we start but with the greatest mystery-solving duo in history. While Sherlock is undeniably the brains of the operation, Watson is there to keep Sherlock on course, triggering new trains of thought and most importantly keeping Sherlock tied to the wider human world.

2. Mulder and Scully

A close second for most revered mystery duo out there is The X-Files’ Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who rock a believer vs. skeptic dynamic. Scully sticks firmly to what science can tell her, while Mulder is more willing to go off into bizarro land. Between the two of them, they always find the answers.

3. Rust and Marty

With the two protagonists of the first season of True Detective, here again we find the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Rust’s edgy, left-of-center character is complemented by Marty’s easygoing, steadfast personality, creating a powerful mixture of abstract and concrete thinking.

4. Rosemary and Thyme

The dynamic between the “gardening detectives” of Rosemary & Thyme is completely different from those previous listed. These two are more like peas in a pod than yin and yang, knowing how to play off one other to foil others’ expectations of their capabilities and to misdirect attention. All the while, they’ll calmly piece together all the clues to solve the crime at hand.

5. Jamie and Adam

Here we have a real example of a dynamic mystery solving duo: MythBusters’ Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage. The two trained special effects artists use critical thinking to try, try, try again, until they find the answers to the (literally) burning questions at hand, in their effort to prove or dispel myths of science and the natural world.

Feeling confident? Book one of our Vancouver escape rooms for you and just one friend here: http://bookeo.com/krakit/.