Work-from-home culture is proving to be both a blessing and a curse. It has given staff more flexibility and work-life balance but has created a disconnect among team members due to the absence of intentional interactions. Virtual team escape rooms have gained popularity for the very reason that it corrects this problem and engages participants.
The team and I tried an in person amazing escape 3 years ago, and found the experience thrilling! We decided it’s high time we try a few virtual escape rooms that recreate the fun of finding a way out. This post gives you a rundown on 16 virtual escape rooms for team building.
Let’s first understand what a virtual escape room is, its benefits, and what to consider when you’re picking one for the team.
1. What is a Virtual Team Escape Room?
A virtual escape room, as the name suggests, is a completely online or web-based mystery, team building game. A company conducts a virtual escape room via Zoom, Slack, or other video-conferencing platform for team building.
These virtual escape room organizers create a mysterious and dynamic plot for “virtual rooms”. Different teams solve various puzzles or riddles or unearth hidden clues to solve the mystery and escape the room in a stipulated time-limit. Individuals can also arrange a virtual escape room with friends for fun and enjoyment.
Companies have started seeing virtual team escape rooms as a great way to keep employees motivated. A virtual team escape room engages employees, encourages healthy competition, and promotes collaborative spirit.
2. How to Pick the Right Virtual Team Escape Room?
Picking the best virtual team escape rooms for team building can sometimes be tricky. There are primarily three factors that you need to consider while picking a virtual escape room for your work.
While some virtual escape rooms like ‘Black Noir’ can serve small teams of around 5-10, games like ‘International Monster Hunter’ allow an unlimited number of players! Your choice of a virtual team escape room depends on your teams’ size.
The time to organize a virtual team escape room session for team building is also crucial. Try to book a session closer towards the end of the week so that participants can join in after finishing their work.
2.3 Difficulty Level
The difficulty levels vary per virtual escape rooms, which determine how entertaining your team will find it. There are various companies that walk you through each game’s details and indicate its level of difficulty and skills required. Think about your team and find out which skills you need your teams to develop or hone along with fun.
3. 16 Must-Consider Virtual Team Escape Room Websites
3.1 International Monster Hunter
Does your team love ghostbusters and sleuths? Well, International Monster Hunter is the game for them. This game is full of different types of puzzles and wits.
Here are the basic rules. You can assign the role of detectives to your team members. They can participate in the game, follow dynamic clues, answer trivia and collaborate to track and trap monsters and creepy creatures from across the globe.
The Monster Hunter offers a host of games featuring cryptids from different continents which makes it a truly international expedition. Though we couldn’t play them all, we particularly enjoyed the Loch Ness Monster hunt.
The game lasts 90-minutes and up to 300 people can participate (but it works just as well for small teams, so no worries!). You can conduct it over a secure video conference link that this escape room company passes. International Monster Hunter provides an energetic host to facilitate it and make sure that all the participants feel involved. There’s also a cohost to ensure that everyone’s tech works fine.
3.2 Trapped in the Web
Trapped in the Web is a series of virtual team escape rooms that you can play alone or in teams. These virtual team escape rooms are mostly text-based and pass clues in the form of images and videos to help solve puzzles.
These puzzles are tricky and require you to go back and forth through various rooms and move to the next stage. Though there is no fixed limit, the recommended number of players for this game is 2 to 8.
Each room typically takes from one to three hours to complete. The best part is that it doesn’t need you to download anything besides video chat software like Zoom, Webex, Teams, etc.
We all cherish the good old school days and get nostalgic. How great would it be to play a game that sends you back to those times? That’s why we picked ‘School’s Out’ to play!
The game opens with a school reunion where all the long-lost friends are catching up. Everything’s fun and lively until you notice something seems off with the closed doors. They aren’t budging an inch when you try to open them. That’s when you realize everyone’s locked in!
The panic felt real and we had to enact the schoolmates to find a way out by solving the puzzles. It was an unforgettable experience for our team and we strongly recommend giving this game a shot – it’s worth it!
We also suggest checking out other games like Space Race, Escape Fest, etc. which we’re planning to pick next.
Want to put on your detective hat and solve mysteries? Try Sherlock’s, a popular virtual team escape room company based in Kentucky, US. It provides you and your team members a chance to help a live actor in a real escape room to escape through given instructions.
There are 9 different adventures including The Shipwreck, Cabin in the Woods, The Lost Kingdom, The Shed, The Bank Heist, Outbreak: Find the Cure, Zombie Survival Run, and more.
On a scale of 10, with 1 being the least and 10 the most difficult, the game ranges between 6 and 8. This company charges $159 per group for each adventure. The maximum number of players it allows for each group is 8 to optimize the overall gaming experience.
3.4 The Panic Room
Founded in 2016, The Panic Room has transformed from a pop-up virtual team escape room into the UK’s most popular brand with 4 locations across 2 countries. When COVID-19 hit, they launched a brand new web format to create amazing new virtual experiences for people.
I like the fact that The Panic Room provides a lot of filters for you to apply to pick the right game. You can select games according to the difficulty level, age and number of players. Another strong reason why we recommend The Panic Room is that it provides virtual team escape room bundles where you can avail of a lot of games of different types in one place.
The Panic Room is playable on most devices, with 24 x 7 access to games. There’s also a vast variety of choices.
A player can pick a virtual escape room with friends, colleagues, or family, and enjoy the game. Printable Gift Online Escape Rooms, CSI, Murder at the Manor, etc. are some examples. The prices range from as low as $15 for a virtual team escape room game to as high as $105 for an escape room bundle.
Confundrum’s middle name is FUN! When thinking of virtual escape room ideas, Canada-based Confundrum Escape Rooms can be one of the best choices. At Confundrum, you can select a room specific to you and your team’s interest.
Be it horror, fun or thrill, Confundrum games have it all. What makes it more exciting is the 3-D immersive graphics
. There are good virtual escape rooms for team building corporate events, team building, and morale boosting. Brands that have had fun with the themes available Confundrum provides are Hortons, Subway, Microsoft, and more. on Confundrum include Audi, Mercedes Benz and Hyundai.
We had the opportunity to try ‘Twisted Woods’, a virtual escape room where you run out of gas near the woods surrounding a cabin. We entered a common room designed to look like the interior of an abandoned cabin. The game ends when you find and solve all the clues to get out of the woods alive. It almost felt real, especially with the spooky background music added for effect. We’d give it a 7 on 10, difficulty wise, and rate the overall experience a 9!
If you want a simpler game for your team, go for Blackbeard’s Brig. The fans of the “Pirates of the Carribean” series will surely love this game where where you have to find out a way to escape from a pirate named Blackbeard who’s held you as a hostage. Its average difficulty is 6/10 and it lasts around 60 minutes. This existing pirate-themed game for beginners gets a big thumbs up from us!
If you are looking to play a virtual escape room with friends, family, or coworkers, Roobicks virtual escape rooms are a great pick! Your remote teams can solve interactive online puzzles, compete with each other in groups, and more.
You can form a group and interact with it and your game master over a video chat. Roobicks also lets you watch immersive videos and encounter puzzles and riddles. Remote teams can crack codes and find clues to unlock the next stage of the adventure. The general duration of every adventure is one hour.
It has one more advantage that it helps develop a healthy competition. The full team can start together first and divide into small teams later to escape the game first.
3.7 Mystery Escape Room
Want to put on your detective’s hat, sail on the ships, or embark as a superhero? Welcome to Mystery Escape Room’s Virtual Team Escape Room. An official guide also connects with you over a conference call to answer your queries and guide you throughout.
For over 8 team members, it lets you divide them into groups of 4 or 8 and book multiple events at the same time. Each event costs around $80 to $90 per team and lasts 60 minutes.
While looking up the list of games, we chose ‘Nancy Drew’ as our next virtual escape room game because most of us have binge-watched the Nancy Drew series. And I must say – we made the right decision!
The story opens with Nancy Drew’s unprecedented disappearance. We played Nancy Drew’s “investigative” friends, and had to follow her footprints, which led us to the Monroe Mansion’s interiors. Inside lie secrets and more mysteries to solve. It’s up to us to wade through them all and find out where Nancy is!
This game kept us on the edge of our seat till the end. And no, we’re not giving out spoilers!
You can also try Moriatory’s Parlour, Remember the Ghosts of Christmas, and other games on the site.
TeamWorx is one of the best virtual team escape room companies that provide some exciting virtual escape rooms for team building. All events include a live host and focus on maximizing human interaction and fun. There are 12 virtual team escape room options for team building including Who Stole AntiMatter, Speed Teams, Virtual Coffee, Thematrix, and more.
“Who Stole Anti-Matter” aroused our curiosity and we picked it. And it turned out to be the game that turned us into “Avengers” – at least in the game. The theft of the top-secret antimatter technology from MatterMatters Corp, a research company sets the stage of the game. The biggest worry is that if this technology gets into the wrong hands through the black market, the world is finished. We are a part of the investigative team that Global Energy Research and Development’s head has summoned. It’s a race against time and we have to recover the stolen antimatter technology before it’s too late!
This 2-hour game gave us the thrill of being the superheroes we watch on screen. If you want to be the savior of the world, I bet this game won’t disappoint you!
There are other games like Speed Teams, TheMatrix, Virtual Coffee also that you can explore and have fun.
The total time for different games varies for 1 to 3 hours or even up to 1 week for games like Virtual Ping Pong where you can schedule a week-long tournament for your company.
You can easily run it across all video conferencing tools. They have solutions to cater to both small or large groups and can host 1-day, 2-day, or 1-event virtual team building celebrations. They can also schedule games for international teams with virtual events scheduled according to their time zones.
3.9 Hogwarts Digital Escape Room
Are you also a 90s kid who loves the Harry Potter series? What if you had a chance to experience the magical thrill of Hogwarts virtually? That’s what the Hogwarts Digital Escape Room is for. Relive your teenage years imagining what it’s like to be sorted into Great Houses and solving puzzles.
The most appealing highlight is that it is free and is in the form of Google Docs. It became so popular that over 225,000 users played it across 22 countries including Australia, NZ, India, Germany, etc. within 2 weeks of its launch. This game is suitable for all ages and takes about 15 minutes to play. You’ll need your math and critical thinking abilities to solve three puzzles.
If you have Harry Potter fans on your team, get them to play the game and they’ll cherish it forever with a recreated Hogwarts’ experience. This is indeed the best virtual escape room for team building for Potterheads.
3.10 Romeo and Juliet
A true Shakespeare’s fan won’t miss out on this virtual team escape room. If there are Shakespeare’s fans and admirers of Romeo and Juliet’s in your team, here’s the best virtual escape room for team building specifically for them. The best part is that it’s free!
Your colleagues will enjoy applying word power, math-solving skills, and critical thinking. Together, you and your team will aim to solve different types of puzzles requiring different types of skills to help Romeo and Juliet unite and solve the feud between their families. Be ready to give these star crossed lovers a happy ending!
3.11 Paruzal Games
Paruzal hosts live online virtual escape rooms for team building. It offers some of the best virtual escape room game options that anyone can play via an interactive Zoom call. You’ll get the verbal description of the scenario from the episode you picked. It also shows various images of the items surrounding you available to interact with if you want to. Your team can tell the GrandMaster how to proceed, inspect items, open doors, solve riddles, and win the game.
Paruzal Games also have staff to run simultaneous virtual team escape room sessions for your group. We picked “Get Your Motor Running” as our virtual team escape room game for our party. The game opens to the scene where you and your friends have just surfaced after scuba diving. You board the dive boat and to your surprise, the captain is missing and you are far away from the shore! You can’t spot the captain even on the shore and the anxiety starts building up. Your team must start the motor boat and get to the shore anyhow before the storm traps you. It costs $15 per person and is around 60 minutes in length.
This game got our adrenaline pumping as we worked out the way to reach the shore safely. And we are sure you’ll experience the same effect, too!
There are also other games like Trapped Under Water which give you a traditional escape room experience and take around 54 minutes to complete. Some other games like Sneaking Backstage are more creative and require some more imaginative skills. A Pirate’s Projections and Pizza Makes Anything Possible are significantly trickier and demand more focus and take an average of 63 minutes to complete.
3.12 Black Noir
Those with investigative minds look for virtual room escape ideas with mystery themes. And if you have “sleuths” in your teams, playing Black Noir can be one of the best virtual team escape room ideas. It’s a game where you play Mr. Jones, a suave and witty Private Investigator.
When you join in, you’re greeted by a mysterious letter that takes you through the puzzles you have to solve. You and your team have to go through the crime trail and interrogate suspects to solve the murder mystery. Set in the gangster era, this game takes you through beautiful locations in the old New York city. What you need to do is to solve the crime to prevent another murder from happening.
You can purchase one access code for each group of 3 to 5 people and play it over Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams. One code remains valid for one year and you can use it anytime to play the game. It costs $49 for each group.
3.13 Doctor Who Worlds Collide Escape Room
Dr. Who’s fans or Whovians in the house will like this virtual team escape room game the most. The creators of Doctor Who released remote game experiences of this famous British science-fiction TV program. You and your team can connect over Zoom and experience Escape Hunt’s real escape rooms from the comfort of your home. You can enjoy directing the game’s master, have them move around, pick hidden clues, solve puzzles, and escape before time is up!
In Worlds Collide, Doctor Who needs help to fend off Cybermen. So, get ready and step into the future, enter ChronosCorp HQ’s offices, and save the Earth from Cybermen. Doctor Who: Worlds Collide lasts one hour and is fit for up to 6 players. 5-6 players can play this game for $120.
3.14 Escape: The Midnight Express
This is a perfect game for Agatha Christie’s fans who have read herr famous novel “Murder on the Orient Express”. Or, if you are a fan of movies where the protagonist time travels, this game is for you.
This guided online virtual team escape room takes participants through a mystery that occurs in a midnight train. The mystery is to find out the change to the timeline which has a connection with Abraham Lincoln. This game has audio and visual components and gives multiple hints to help you solve each clue.
All you and your team have to do is to gather the evidence of change to the timeline and get off the train before someone discovers you.
3.15 Puzzle Break
One of the best virtual team escape rooms for team building in the US is the Revolutionary Virtual Escape Experiences by Puzzle Break. You can play in teams of over 7 participants in virtual team building games and there is no upper limit to your group.
For instance, School for Spies focuses on skills like research and reference, communication, information analysis, attention to detail, global perspective, memory and teamwork. Hackfiltration, on the other hand, hinges on teams picking up ambiguities and applying their critical thinking and pattern recognition skills to solve the clues.. Disco Detectives help in active collaboration, multi-tasking, and exploration. The Grimme Escape helps develop team delegation skills, concentration, rationality, coordination, etc.
60Out provides one of the best virtual team escape rooms to provide people with a great gaming experience. It offers fun online experiences with a variety of fun themes. There are a series of downloadable games to facilitate critical thinking, problem solving, and encourage team building.
Already popular for their offline escape rooms spread across Los Angeles, they are now into online virtual team escape room games as well. The game Miss Jezebel Online is a great virtual team escape room game that you can pick for your next virtual party. It’s a game themed in the residence of Miss Jezebel, the “killer” of her husband and you are his guests! You feel a tingly sensation from the creepy vibes of the house. After all, it can’t be an ordinary tea party when you are in a killer’s company! The guests have to figure out how to survive her horrifying hospitality and gather enough evidence to prove her crime.
Up to 8 players can play this game.It is filled with thrill and ‘adult’ comedy in parts. We assure you that this virtual team escape room won’t make you regret your decision!
4. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
4.1 Can you do an escape room virtually?
Yes, you can. In fact, since the onset of the pandemic, virtual escape rooms have become even more popular. There are several big companies that provide virtual escape rooms that let users participate online via Zoom, Google Meet, or any similar video conferencing platform. A virtual escape room can be of both types – free and paid. All you need is an active subscription for a paid virtual room and a stable internet connection!
4.2 What does a virtual room cost?
The pricing of virtual rooms varies from one company to another. They can be anything from as low as $15 for some games to even $160 or more for others. Prices can vary according to the difficulty level, capacity, and various other factors.
4.3 Are there any free virtual rooms?
4.4 What is the best virtual escape room?
Put simply, there is no such best virtual escape room. There are various escape rooms better in terms of audio-visual experience, graphics, 3-D experience, etc. However, there is no such fixed criterion to tag a particular escape room as the best.If I still have to pick my personal favorites, I would recommend International Monster Hunter and Black Noir as I love cryptid-themed stories and sleuth stories.
4.5 How do you zoom in a virtual team escape room?
Generally, video escape room companies pass over a Zoom link to you for the game. You can open the link on the browser, connect with your friends and coworkers and start playing the game in groups.