01/10/2025
WEXIE NEEDS YOU!!! Lovely escapers, if you've ever got stuck talking to Knockout's chief puzzlemufflers James and Charlie, you've probably heard them waxing lyrical about the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiast's Choice Awards or, The 'TERPECA's. AKA, The gold standard oscars of the Escape Room industry. These ranks are normally dominated by the incredible games in Europe, many of which inspired the long-length actor-led games over at our sister company, Deadlocked Escape Rooms, in particular, our ode to European horror, The Reading Witch. Last year, no UK games even got a mention, which is hard to believe given some of the incredible quality of games in this country. We put it mostly down to two things: 1) There are more European enthusiast TERPECA voters, and B), There just aren't enough mega hyped up games over here to tempt them onto a rammed easyjet flight to see what the UK is made of. So we are now on a mission. We want to show the mainland what we can do. The UK has a long history as producing some of the best entertainment in the world - and it's time Escape Rooms were recognised as the art that it is. If you've played 200 or more escape rooms, you are able to represent your country to fight for the arts, and can register as a nominator. Nominate your favourite UK games before the 31st October and help put the UK on the Escape Room map. Once the European enthusiasts start visiting one or two of us, they will visit more of us, and the UK Escape Room Industry will have a massive injection (which right now, is so badly needed), and hopefully, more and more owners will start to build more experimental games, and we'll truly have an industry to rival Europe's incredible lineup of iconic games.
The Reading Witch is our baby, and we consider it our hat thrown into the ring. If you haven't played it yet, and want to get it in before Terpeca, we urge you to come as soon as possible and let us thrill you for two hours, and if you're interested in talking more about Escape Rooms, we can even pop next door to the pub to share our insights about the industry. We haven't got the budget, or the space of the European games - but by gosh, have we got the heart. We're working hard and taking risks to change the game in this country - and an accolade like this, will genuinely change ours forever.
Please, please register for the Terpecas to discover some of the best experiences in the world. You soon won't even book a holiday without consulting the oracle to see what games you can tick off your top 100 list.
And please, please consider Deadlocked Escape Rooms (and Knockout!) in your TERPECA nominations.
From the bottom of our crazy little hearts,
James, Charlie, and the whole team at Deadlocked / Knockout (..Dead..Knocked? ...We'll workshop it).
Happy International Escape Room Day! In celebration, the 2025 TERPECA nomination window is now open.
Nominations are due October 31 at 11:59 PM Pacific time.
If you're already approved as a nominator, check out our new How To Nominate video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDaMt8iQNSk. (There are some minor changes to the flow since we made that video, but it should still prove useful.)
If you're not an approved nominator, but you've played 200+ rooms and would like to nominate, visit https://voters.terpeca.com/ to apply or upgrade. Note that as of today, we no longer count online games in your room count (and the portal will soon be updated to reflect that), so now it will require 200+ in-person games to qualify for an upgrade.
Finally, please spread the word to anyone else you know that's played at least 200 rooms to apply for nominator status as well. We are always trying to grow our pool of contributors to improve our coverage and quality of results.
We will announce the results of the nomination phase and launch the voting phase in early November. For questions, visit https://voters.terpeca.com/faq.
Stay tuned!
