10Escapes is a
project run by El Quinto Elemento Room Escapers
to recognize, reward, and thank the best escape rooms in Spain,
as determined by votes from enthusiasts.
The 2024 award season is underway!
Would you like to contribute this year as a voter or nominator? Apply at the
Voter Portal.
Looking for the escape rooms we've honored in the past? Check out the
Room Finder.
Are you an escape room owner that wants to be sure your room is eligible?
Visit the FAQ for details.
Just want to stay in the loop? Follow us on
Facebook and
Instagram for updates.
About the Project
The Top Escape Rooms Project is an attempt to find the very best escape rooms in the world by leveraging the experience of the most experienced escape room enthusiasts in the world. We serve escape room owners and designers by publicly recognizing their achievements, and we serve our fellow enthusiasts by providing an international bucket list of the best rooms to play.
The top rooms identified by this project each year are awarded a Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts' Choice Award, or TERPECA, which represents the best of the best in the international escape room industry.
2024 Top Rooms
Stay tuned -- the 2024 winners will be announced December 21st!
To see last year's winners, visit the 2023 website or to explore all the past results from this project, check out the TERPECA Room Finder .
2024 Winners Map
Stay tuned -- the 2024 winners will be announced December 21st!
To see last year's winners, visit the 2023 website or to explore all the past results from this project, check out the TERPECA Room Finder .
Top Regional Sites
The Top Escape Rooms Project's mission to find the best escape rooms in the world is clearly limited by the fact that the TERPECAs currently only recognize and honor rooms and companies that support English-speaking players and are in the countries and regions where such players are likely to visit. We humbly acknowledge that this approach fails to recognize many, many world-class escape rooms available around the world, so here we present a list of some of the most trusted websites from around the world that offer awards and rankings that we feel can help fill in many of the gaps left by our approach. We focus primarily on sites that offer aggregated recommendations, rankings, and awards that are derived from the opinions of many, rather than any sites that focus on the rankings or opinions of a single person or small group of people.
Note: The Top Escape Rooms Project has no official affiliation with any of the websites listed.
If you have any suggestions for more websites we should consider for this section, please contact us at admin@terpeca.com.
Всички стаи maintains
listings of escape rooms across Bulgaria including user reviews
and ratings.
EGA runs an
annual awards ceremony celebrating the best games across China,
as voted for by their panel of judges drawn from enthusiasts and
industry experts.
ER.SI
provides a comprehensive list of all escape games in Slovenia.
escapedia.ca provides a
database of of all the escape games in Canada, complete with
maps, booking schedules, reviews, and aggregated ratings.
Escape the Review DE
provides reviews and rankings for escape rooms by enthusiasts and
bloggers in Germany and surrounding areas. This is the German
version of the UK-based site also mentioned in this section.
Escape
Room Awards is an annual competition for escape rooms in
Spain where a panel of judges, including enthusiasts and
owners, choose the best escape rooms across the country.
Escape Room Lover
provides a database of escape rooms throughout Spain, including
user ratings for each room, organized by location.
Escape the Review
provides reviews and rankings for escape rooms by enthusiasts and
bloggers in the United Kingdom and beyond. They also maintain
the most comprehensive reviews and rankings for
play-at-home games available in English around the world.
EscapeAll.gr lists most
of the escape rooms in Greece and provides booking and reviews
for them. It includes average user ratings for each game although
there’s nowhere to see a sorted list.
EscapeGame•fr has a
comprehensive list of escape rooms across France alongside
information and user reviews and ratings. They also run the annual
Escape Game Awards to
decide the best escape rooms across France based on enthusiasts’ votes
across the regions.
The Escapers is a
community platform that provides aggregated ratings and reviews for all
of France that allows users to track, rate, and review all the
games they play.
Escaper maintains a
ranked list of games in Israel with Escape Certified Ratings,
based on ratings given by users of the site.
EscapeRoomers.de
compiles rankings across various cities and countries in Europe based on
rankings from experienced enthusiasts. At the time of writing it
includes rankings for games in Austria, Belgium,
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel,
Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain,
Switzerland, and United Kingdom.
They also publish a list of their top
remote
play games.
EscapeTalk.nl
provides reviews and rankings from thousands of users for all
the escape rooms in the Benelux region of Belgium, the
Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
ExtraReality.by provides annual awards,
reviews, and ratings for all the escape rooms in Belarus.
Korea
Institute of Escape Rooms (KIER) runs the annual Korea Escape Room Awards
for the best escape rooms in South Korea as voted on by enthusiasts.
Lockme is a platform for rating and booking escape rooms in
Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and many other European countries.
Lockme also co-creates escape room games and runs the
ER Champ World Escape Room Championship.
Morty provides reviews, rankings,
awards, bookings, and more in the United States, Canada, and many of
the major cities in Europe.
T4F.ir,
AllEscape.ir, and
EscapeZoom.ir
are several useful sites dedicated to escape rooms in Iran that
provide services that include booking, reviews, and annual awards.
Methodology
The Top Escape Rooms Project consists of two phases: a nomination phase and a ranking phase.
Phase 1: Nominations
In the nomination phase, which takes place during the month of October each year, pre-approved nominators (consisting of enthusiasts that have played 200 or more escape rooms) are asked to privately nominate up to 10 rooms that they feel should be considered in the conversation for best in the world. Rooms that won the Top Room award the previous year and would otherwise be eligible for the current year are granted automatic finalist status and thus cannot be nominated. At the conclusion of nominations, the threshold for the number of independent nominations required to be named a finalist is determined by the board. Those rooms that meet or exceed that threshold, along with the automatic finalists mentioned above, move on to Phase 2. In 2023, it required 5 nominations to become a finalist, but this number is likely to continue to increase as the project grows.
Owners, employees, investors, designers, consultants, and other direct affiliates of a given escape room or escape room company, past or present, as well as spouses, partners, or family members of any such affiliates, are not allowed to nominate any of the corresponding rooms for which they may have a conflict of interest.
For a room to be eligible for nomination, it must be open to the public AND playable in English for at least 30 days between November 1 of the previous year and October 31 of the current year (i.e. the nomination deadline). For regions in which English is not the primary language, English availability must be clearly designated at the company's website and/or linked booking platform, and the company must intend to continue offering English-language play as long as the room is open. See the FAQ section on eligibility for additional details on these requirements.
Details for the analysis and results of Phase 1 will be provided after nominations conclude in 2024.
Phase 2: Rankings
In the ranking phase, which takes place during the month of November each year, pre-approved voters (consisting of enthusiasts that have played 100 or more escape rooms, plus any enthusiasts approved as voters when the requirement was lower than 100) are asked to provide a complete, ordered stack rank of the rooms that survived Phase 1. They are only allowed to rank rooms that they have played and for which they do not have a potential conflict of interest, as defined in the previous section. Voters can also choose not to rank a room that they've played for any reason.
Once again, owners, employees, investors, designers, consultants, and other direct affiliates of a given escape room or escape room company, past or present, as well as spouses, partners, or family members of any such affiliates, are not allowed to rank any of the corresponding rooms for which they may have a conflict of interest.
Stack ranks are used for this process rather than numerical ratings because it forces participants to think hard about every entry in their stack, and this approach does not suffer from different people having different calibrations for numerical ratings.
Details for the analysis and results of Phase 2 will be provided after voting concludes in 2024.
For additional information on the methodology and how the project works, visit the TERPECA Voter Portal FAQ .
2024 Phase 1 Results
Stay tuned -- the 2024 nominees and finalists will be announced in early November!
2024 Phase 2 Results
Stay tuned -- the 2024 winners will be announced December 21st!
To see last year's winners, visit the 2023 website or to explore all the past results from this project, check out the TERPECA Room Finder .
The Board
Rich Bragg (Los Altos, CA, USA) is the founder of the Top Escape
Rooms Project. Rich has played over 1200 escape rooms and over 300
puzzle hunts in North America and Europe. He has four top 10 finishes in
international escape room competitions (3rd in the 2017
Red Bull Escape Room
World Championships, 10th in the 2019
Red Bull Escape Room
World Championships, 3rd in the 2020
ER Champ Open Escape Room
Championship, 5th in the 2022
ER Champ Open Escape Room
Championship), is a former Guinness World Record holder for most
escape rooms played in one day, and is the co-founder and CEO of
ClueKeeper, a platform for creating
and playing location-based clue hunts.
Sarah Dodd (London, UK) has played over 2500 rooms. This
makes her one of the most experienced escape room players in the
western world alongside Sharan, with whom she's played every single game.
Together they have a 99.8% escape rate, have played in 17 different
countries, and once played 615 games in a single year. Only discovering
escape rooms in May 2016 when Sarah decided to book something spontaneous
for her own birthday, they have since been members of Team UK during both
Red Bull Escape Room
World Championships. They've played approximately 500 games as a pair
and shared 1000 games with over 80 different teammates from around the
world, at least 500 of which have been with the incumbent UK team, Team
Squared. Sera co-founded and has run the UK
Escape Room Industry Conference (ERIC) for the past three years, works
as a UX and Design Consultant within the industry, was a speaker and
panelist at Up the Game in 2017, 2018 and 2019, is an admin of the UK
Escape Room Owners Facebook group, a moderator on the UK Escape Room
Enthusiasts Group, one of three co-hosts on a new UK-based ER podcast, runs
Team Squared’s Instagram account and has been featured in the UK press, TV
and radio on a number of occasions. Her real hobbies include bouldering and
befriending wild animals. In her spare time, she's a doctor.
Dan Egnor (San Mateo, CA, USA) has played over 1200 rooms and is a
former Guinness World Record holder for most escape rooms played in one day.
He was the creator and maintainer of the now defunct, but much
beloved, Escape Room
Directory, and he has contributed to the design and production of
multiple award-winning games at
Palace Games in San Francisco.
Errol Elumir (Toronto, ON, Canada) has played over 300 rooms and he
creates puzzle hunts and large scale theatrical escape events. Errol is
also a former co-host of the sadly defunct popular escape room podcast
Room Escape
Divas, helps compile the annual
Escape Room Enthusiast
Survey, has
13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design, and keeps a number of his
other articles on the infrequently visited website
thecodex.ca. He's a freak about puzzle
design.
Victor Espriu and Maria Jose Navarro (Barcelona, Spain)
have both played over 1000 rooms in 21 countries, and both are members of
the well-known "El Quinto Elemento" escape team, which rates and
reviews all the games they play at
room-escapers.com. Victor
serves as an admin for the Spanish "room escapers" group on Facebook,
and also serves as the TERPECA Ambassador to Spain.
Ken Ferguson (London, UK) has played over 1000 rooms and runs
The Logic Escapes Me, an
escape room review blog covering the UK and Europe, as well as
Exit Games UK, a directory, map, and
news site for UK games. He was a member of Team UK in the 2017
Red Bull Escape Room
World Championship, was on the design team for the 2019 competition,
and was a speaker at UK, US, and European escape room conferences in
2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
David and Lisa Spira (New York City, NY, USA) have both played over
1000 rooms, publish about escape rooms daily at
RoomEscapeArtist.com,
launched in 2014, and have served on the nomination panel for the
USA Today
10 Best Escape Rooms. They keep an updated directory
of escape room companies in the United States and run Escape Immerse
Explore, group tours to some of the country's best escape rooms... and
contrary to popular assumption, they also have day jobs.
Heiner Stepen (Munich, Germany) is a well-traveled enthusiast
that has played over 2000 rooms in person, and over 600 rooms online. He
runs the
Escape Roomers
DE Facebook group and the
Escape Roomers DE website,
which reviews and aggregates rankings for escape rooms throughout Europe
and online, and in 2019, he won the Swiss Escape Room Championship.
Heiner also serves as the TERPECA Ambassador to Germany.
The Ambassadors
Since 2020, the TERPECA Regional Ambassador Program has helped with outreach to known regions from around the world where escape rooms are popular. These ambassadors recruit participants, process rooms, raise awareness of the project, and much more.
Lee-Fay Low, representing Australia, is a key contributor
to the annual
Escape Room Enthusiast
Survey, helps organize RECON,
and was a member of the inaugural Stewardship Committee for
the Escape Rooms Discord
community.
Stefan Bauer, representing Austria, is one half of
Two Bears Life, a couple who loves
to travel the world and discover new and exciting escape rooms all over
the globe.
Dimitar Smilyanov and Nadezhda Danabasheva, representing
Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia,
and Slovenia, play together on Team Fury, which finished 6th at the
2019 Red Bull Escape Room World Championships. They blog about their
team's experience playing escape rooms around the world and online on
Nadia's
Blog and at Fury Escape.
Patrick Pilon, representing Canada, is an admin for the
French-speaking Facebook group “Accros aux jeux d’évasion”, a
collaborator on escapedia.ca, and
organizes “Triathlon des accros” meet-ups with local enthusiasts.
His team, the Purple Koalas, won the 2019 Enigmorama escape games
competition.
Melissa Faucher, representing France, is a contributor to
EscapeGame•fr, an escape room
directory and review site for France and beyond.
Jonas Rasmussen, representing the Nordic countries of Denmark,
Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden is is among
the most experienced enthusiasts from that region and is dedicated to building
a more connected community for Nordic enthusiasts.
Heiner Stepen, representing Germany, does double duty as
a TERPECA board member, mentioned above, while he also handles all the
ambassador duties for Germany.
Elli Kouliadelli and Georgina Vanikioti, representing Greece, are
both well-connected enthusiasts from Athens. Elli is also a coordinator for the
<3 4
Escape Rooms Facebook group for Greek enthusiasts.
Ron Kagan, representing Israel, is a well-connected
enthusiast who has played more games than anyone from Israel, including
having played every game within the nation.
Alessandro Crepaldi and Chiara Tesi, representing
Italy, are members of the team
iTopissimi, and are dedicated
to spreading the passion for escape rooms throughout Italy and Europe.
Santiago Onel, representing the Benelux region consisting of Belgium,
the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, is a top reviewer and guest writer
for EscapeTalk.nl, a moderator and reviewer
for EscapeRoomers.de, and admin for
the Escape Room Enthusiasts
NL, BE Facebook group for Benelux enthusiasts.
Wojciech Nadara, representing Poland, is a well-connected
enthusiast, whose team, Ewarsaw Eagles, finished 3rd in PolandEscape
2019, 13th in ER Champ 2020, and 5th in ER Champ 2021.
Victor Espriu, representing Spain, does double duty as
a TERPECA board member, mentioned above, while he also handles all the
ambassador duties for Spain.
Ryan Driver, representing Switzerland, works on a luxury
cruise ship that travels the world, and plays on a team known as
The World Escape
Crew.
Mairi Nolan, representing the UK, is the editor of the
Escape Industry News and also
writes reviews and articles on escape rooms at
The Escape Roomer.
John Devendorf, representing the US, is a highly respected
member of the U.S. escape room community and has been a contributor to
the Top Escape Rooms Project since its inception in 2018.
The Contributors
The list of 2024 contributors will remain private until the 2024 winners are announced.
Download Logos
If your room or company is a TERPECA honoree or if you are a journalist or blogger writing about the project, please feel free to download these logos, subject to the usage guidelines listed below the logos.
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
Usage Guidelines
- Journalists and bloggers are free to use any of the logos in support of their TERPECA-related content.
- Rooms and companies may only use logos associated with the status they've achieved. The Top Room, Top Online Room, and Top Company logos (and any modified logo with the "ribbon" design) are for only the official TERPECA winners, i.e. those who specifically won a Top Room, Top Online Room, or Top Company award. Finalist logos are only for rooms and companies that advanced to Phase 2 of the project. Nominee logos are only for rooms and companies that received a nomination.
- Minor modifications to a logo that has been earned by a room or company is acceptable, provided that any modifications do not misrepresent the placement of a room or company, do not remove the year of the award, and do not misrepresent the goals or spirit of the project in general.
- Use of the TERPECA logo that suggests an affiliation with TERPECA that does not exist, or that suggests a room or company has won an award it did not win is strictly prohibited.
- If you're unsure of your usage, please contact us first at admin@terpeca.com.
Contact
Follow us on Facebook or Instagram for future announcements about the project.
If you've played 100 or more escape rooms and would like to contribute to the project in future years, visit the TERPECA Voter Portal to learn more and sign up.
If you have any other questions about this project, contact Rich Bragg at rich@terpeca.com.