Reality Escape Pod - Escape Rooms & Immersive Games

In this episode, David and Peih-Gee were joined by Steve, the creator of Blood on the Clocktower... and they talked a whole lot more about Blood on the Clocktower. The conversation spans the overlaps between Clocktower and Survivor, the difficulties of being the Storyteller, and a potential business opportunity for escape room operators (or people who are good at talking and managing game rules).

Find the main REPOD episodes here!

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A few months ago David and Peih-Gee appeared as guests on the Aurelius Whitlock's Murder Mystery Museum. They had learned about the show from our of our Patreon members, and after listening to the show for a few minutes, both of them were convinced that they had to go play. 

Hosts Marcus and Nathan are a ton of fun, and care so deeply about their show, and it permeates everything that they do. 

We hope that you have fun listening, ...

Alexander Gierholz of Logiclocks, Jeroen van Hasselt of Entered, and Meggy Pepelanova came together to create a unique horror experience set in an entire empty wing of a local Marriott Renaissance hotel.

It only ran for a brief time, and now the best way to understand this mind-boggling immersive show is by listening to Alexander and Jeroen tell its story on The Spoilers Club.

When you support Room Escape Artist on Patreon at $15 p...

" Horror is the excitement of the unknown."

It's dark all around you. You clutch your flashlight with trembling hands, but the beam of light blinds you when it hits a wall of fog. In the swirling mist ahead, eerie creatures wander the grounds between you and your goal. You must use your knowledge of the inhabitants of this place to save yourself and your friends. Welcome to Lockhill.

Bill Dalitsikas, owner of Lockhill Escape Gam...

" Challenging yourself is how you produce growth in your own life."

Countless late nights, occasional tears, and many great conversations later, we did it. We made it to 100 episodes of REPOD!

We've had so many incredible guests come on the show, fully willing to share the secret sauce to their success. These guests have been a treasure trove of creative inspiration. From discussing how to create immersive sets, to tricks for ...

"It's the first science-based escape room."

If you ask an escape room enthusiast about entanglement puzzles, what likely springs to mind are those intertwined, bent metal nails that you need to separate. However, for Paul Kwiat, an entanglement puzzle is something else completely. Professor Kwiat is an acclaimed physicist, specializing in quantum physics, including quantum entanglement, along with quantum cryptography, dense-cod...

When Miss Jezebel first debuted, no one had really ever seen anything like it before. It incorporated an actor into the gameplay in a way that felt more akin to larp or interactive theater. For those in the right mindset, it was uproariously funny. It was also screamingly vulgar, with adult props that would make a bachelor party blush. It was an instant darling of the Los Angeles escape room scene.

Brian Corbitt, creator of Miss...

"It was like a laser tag basement with Party City decorations."

Escape rooms? What are those? Well, it says here that you're locked in a room, and if you can't solve the puzzles fast enough, a zombie will get you! According to Trip Advisor, it's the top rated activity in the city.

The year is 2014. Amanda Harris has just discovered her first escape room... and her life was changed forever. Since that fateful day, she has gone ...

"Once it clicks, you have sweet epiphany."

In the dingy dark hallway of an asylum or prison, two men are struggling in a battle of life or death. One man is writhing on the ground while the other has something wrapped around his throat. The art is captivating and gothic, verging on grotesque, and they're animated in an unsettling way. The movement suggests a moment caught in time. We, as investigators, are tasked with uncovering...

"It's not about the size of the room, it's about the richness of the details."

Whether you're making new robot friends, investigating a haunted school, or cooking up some puzzles, the escape rooms at Omescape Sunnyvale are all absolute bangers. Omescape Sunnyvale is a rare gem in the escape room world. Their games are all massive (or feel massive) with gorgeous sets, chock-full of puzzles, and oftentimes with unique mechanics. T...

" It's a quirky and complex puzzle."

 In the sleepy town of Ravenswood Bluff, on the stroke of midnight during a hellish thunderstorm, you hear a scream. You all rushed to the town square to find that your beloved storyteller has been murdered! This is the work of a nefarious demon... a demon that kills by night and takes on human form by day.

Blood on the Clocktower is a game of lies and truth, team building and betrayal, and...

“Creating the escape room becomes the escape room.”

New York City is REPOD co-host David Spira's home market. Whenever he's recommending escape rooms to guests and visitors, his favorite go-to is MyssTic Escape Rooms in Brooklyn, NY. Two of their escape rooms have won Golden Lock awards: Ghost Light, and their newest game, The Bird. Gara Roda and Moritz Marti, the co-founders of MyssTic Rooms, join us today on REPOD to talk abou...

Chris Alden, owner of Palace Games, joins us to share some true stories about chance meetings between Houdini and Teddy Roosevelt, and how this ties into the story of The Roosevelt Room. He tells us about how the progression of the game is meant to mimic the arc of wartime: from the romanticization of war propaganda to the brutal reality of the trenches.

When you support Room Escape Artist on Patreon at $15 per month (or above), yo...

  "Hiding interesting objects in plain sight is a hallmark of Great Gotham Challenge."

In New York, everyone’s got a story. A gimmick. A hustle. The city’s crawling with characters. Some are just colorful. Others... well, others are part of something bigger. A secret. A puzzle. That hot dog vendor on the corner? A whispered password might just grant you access to a secret underground lair. You never really know if someone’s just...

In fact, over the course of the interview, Eric often came back to the importance of finding your inspiration. His two most well-received games were both conceived when an inspiration "lit a fire inside (of him)." He also very candidly tells us about losing that inspiration while in the process of playtesting The Dome, and how he needed to step away to regain a fresh perspective. This worked, because David tells us that there was...

" Am I really playing with Neil Patrick Harris?"

In keeping with the theme of Box Two, Neil Patrick Harris is back for his second appearance on our podcast. And not only that, he also brought a friend. Jonathan Bayme, CEO of theory11, is a longtime collaborator and Neil's bestie. They first met at a magic show Jonathan created for the Nomad Hotel in New York. Neil and Jonathan quickly bonded over a shared passion for elevating t...

 " An outlandish approach to meta puzzles"

"Congratulations and Condolences" is the default phrase when a team of puzzlers has just won the vaunted MIT Mystery Hunt. This is because according to tradition, the winning team must write next year's Mystery Hunt. This daunting task was recently undertaken by Death and Mayhem, the team that wrote the 2025 MIT Mystery Hunt titled "The Case of the Shadow Diamond." At the helm of this i...