Tag Archives: board game cafe

Escape room board games at board game cafes? Ludorati’s “Escape the Cube”

Ludorati "Escape the Cube" logoThis will get a little circular, but it’ll make sense in the end. You go to an escape room facility to play an escape room, right? However, you can play board games that aim to bring the thrill of the escape room experience – and, being a board game, you can play it in a great many places. Board game cafes let you play board games that you don’t own. So you could go to a board game cafe, instead of an escape room, to play an escape room in a box rather than to play an escape room! Why would you? Well, the best escape room board games are at least as good as many escape rooms (see Real Escape Artist, The Logic Escapes Me and others…) and the price is very attractive – something like a third the price of a traditional escape room. It also has some appeal through novelty alone.

Ludorati is a board game cafe in Nottingham. It has a small private room called The Cube, for games played quietly away from the rest of the cafe. They offer Escape The Cube as one of the things that can happen there. “Welcome to Ludorati Café’s ‘Escape The Cube’ series of exciting live action team challenges, which takes the traditional Escape Room tasks into a different realm. We currently have over 100 innovative scenarios in design and the first six are now available to play.” Looking at the catalogue, you might recognise some of the games on offer, with slightly different names, as well-known escape room board games. I look forward to seeing what the other “over 100” minus 6 turn out to be in the fullness of time, and quite where they fall on the axis between escape room and escape room board game. Even if there’s nothing added to an escape room board game, the ability to do it in an environment well-suited to placing an emphasis on the hour time limit nature of the game might be particularly appropriate; you might be able to win an escape game board game, but could you do it… in the Cube?

I tend to think that escape room board games and board game cafes are a smart and natural sort of match. There’s always something of an argument about the value proposition of an escape room board game in that (barring exceptions) it can be expected to lose its capacity to surprise once you’ve seen all it has to offer, and thus can only really be played once per group. Accordingly, the chance to get to play such a game without having to buy it would appeal, and that is exactly the sort of game you might want to play at a board game cafe. Conversely, one might imagine that few copies of an escape room board game would get played more than ones situated at just such a cafe. In discussion, the issue of replayability of these games has been raised; several designs are only intended to be played once to the point where you are invited to alter the physical components as part of the play. I’m not quite sure how a board game cafe would cope with that, but it may just be a consequence of selecting the right games to offer. It’s not as if there aren’t many to choose from!

Clever plan, Ludorati. I look forward to seeing where you’re going with this one, and if others follow suit.

Could there be a really good puzzles and games pub?

Scenario bar in Dalston by Loading. Used without permission, adapted from unknown photographer.I took a bus, earlier today, that went down little White Lion Street, right past The Crystal Maze; this will always make me smile.

I’m dreaming out loud here, but is the world now ready for a really good puzzles and games pub? If someone were to make one, would it be able to stay in business? This flight of fancy comes from observing a number of different, apparently successful, business models:

  • Loading Bar, as pictured above, has a couple of examples which support a business model which intersects “games” and “pub”;
  • Lady Chastity’s Reserve has a couple of examples which support a business model which intersects “escape room” and “pub”;
  • Draughts and Thirsty Meeples, among others, support a business model which intersects “board games” and “licensed cafe”;
  • Noughts and Coffees doesn’t have a fully developed web site, but has two locations, one of which is a straightforward board game cafe, and the other of which hosts escape games and also features a board game cafe, though currently only at the weekends.

Putting it all together, I’m envisioning something that isn’t a pub but is in fact a licensed cafe with board (and potentially, subject to appropriate soundproofing, digital) games very readily available, at least one escape game on the premises, at least a couple of regular quizzes, room enough to host interesting events like a Puzzled Pint and encouragement and sponsorship of game-themed clubs who want to meet there – chess, Scrabble and the like – and so on.

A licensed cafe would mean that there would be no minimum age restrictions on the participants, and it’s not unknown for cafes to host the types of event commonly known as pub quizzes. There’s also a cultural difference in that a bar (and, even more so, a pub) has a connotation of the function of the trip being repeated purchase of drinks, whereas a themed cafe has a connotation of the function of the trip being purchase of food and drinks, as well as participation in enjoyment of the theme – here, by playing games. Could you hang out at a cafe in good company for hours? Certainly so.

Could this survive and make money in the long term? Certainly it would need the right hand at the tiller, and that hand is not mine. Getting the atmosphere right would take some careful balance; the atmosphere would need to support playing games – quite possibly, people who are at the venue with quite different sorts of games in mind – and also support the continued existence of the venue as a cafe, selling enough food and drink (and paid-for gameplay, and games, and other ancillary products) in mind.

You’d also have to be very careful about whether the venue were to develop regulars or not, and what effect regulars might have on those who are attending and less familiar with what the world of games offers. This is a known and solved problem at board games cafes already, so I don’t consider it insurmountable. It would definitely need some deliberate welcoming policies to keep the atmosphere convivial and accessible to those who consider themselves more casual attendees. In my mind, I don’t want an exclusive Private Members’ Club – and, as much as I enjoy reading about the likes of San Francisco’s Jejune Institute (see also HuffPo and The Bold Italic; the cardhouse.com write-up is amazing), that’s not what I’m after either.

There’s also the potential that I could be falling for at least one or two of the Geek Social Fallacies – would people who regard themselves as gamers of one sort or another really want to share a space with gamers of a different sort? That might be trickier. I used to attend a games club which featured people playing minatures wargames, RPGs, trading card games and board games under the same roof – often, in the same large hall. I get the impression that that’s pretty rare. Adding more into the mix – escape games, quizzes, clubs for specific games – might only make things trickier. While there are plenty of examples of business models with the intersection of two different things, perhaps there’s good reason in practice why the limit seems to be two.

Lastly, what might be a good name for the whole thing? How I Met Your Mother got there first with a fictional bar called Puzzles

Now open in Edinburgh: Noughts and Coffees

Noughts and Coffees logoAs had previously been touched upon, there’s an interesting new business called Noughts and Coffees that has just launched in Edinburgh. The plan is for this to be a board game café, where you can go to learn how to play board games or just play ones that you know and like already, also featuring an exit game. The exit game launched on Saturday 12th December and you can already get coffee to take away too; in another month or so, the board game facility should be launched and a second exit game will be made available on the premises.

The exit game has a time limit of one hour and can be played by teams of two to five. The regular price is £66 per team, including VAT, but teams with members who can present a student card can play for just £49 and teams of two are charged only £48. The room is named Area 51, which instantly evokes a theme. “Roswell is a highly debated subject. Imagine something similar on your doorstep… rumour has it that in an Edinburgh there was an incident and hidden away in a basement there is evidence to prove it. No one knows what it contains but you and your friends are about to find out as you have stumbled across it.

Who knows what you might find? This site certainly doesn’t, but knows that there’s only one way to find out. The idea of a board game café with exit games on the premises sounds like the makings of a great day – but with an exit game available there already, why wait to try it out?

Coming soon to Edinburgh: Noughts and Coffees

Noughts and Coffees logoThis might look a little off-topic at first, but stick with it.

STV report that there has been an application for planning permission for a board game café in Edinburgh. The article suggests that the applicant is Daniel Hill, who was behind Escape, Edinburgh’s first exit game and which has grown to Glasgow, Newcastle and Dublin, with licensed games and joint ventures around the world. STV say “Now, the self-confessed gamer wants to create an ultimate destination for puzzle fans and have a board game café and live escape game under one roof.

Board game cafés are nothing new. The most famous UK ones are, arguably, Thirsty Meeples of Oxford and Draughts of London, but this site wouldn’t swear that they were the first. A thread at the Board Games Geek forums asks the question; this site might suggest that the National Chess Centre in London, sadly bombed in the Blitz, would be worth consideration for the UK crown.

However, there are cafés where you can play board games and there are board game cafés, as they are largely thought of these days. Distinguishing features of the latter would include a very wide selection of games, with strong representation from those published within the last twenty years – and the more up-to-date, the better – and staff who will both suggest appropriate games for groups customers and teach the customers how to play them.

The model of combining a board game café with an exit game is new to the UK, but popular in Asia and in the greater Toronto area. Escape Rooms in Toronto maintains a master list of sites in the area and Escape Games Review‘s top spots list highlight four exit game sites which use the model already.

If you’re nosy, the STV article has a link to the planning application so that you might look at the proposed layout of the place. Exit Games UK thinks it looks hugely cool and that the board games café model may well prove to be another part of the future of exit games in this country as well as elsewhere.