Puzzah!: Interactive Game Experience + Q&A With Founders
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The experience starts with a security guard rushing us “detectives” to a room set up as the Denver Center for Performing Arts to figure out how to disarm a bomb. In speakers overhead, a mad composer gives us clues and heckles us as we try to solve the clues. The pressure is on with a clock ticking down from one hour as we scramble and work to solve riddles and put our critical thinking skills to work. Without giving too much of the game away, I will say this isn’t a walk in the park. But there is a sense of accomplishment that comes with a challenge and critical thinking.
We chat with the co-founder, Ryan Pachmayer to learn more about the concept new to Colorado and why they are being called Proprietors of Fun.
Q: How did Puzzah Room come to be?
Two of the three co-founders are husband and wife Derek Anderson and Sarah Cai. They met in London a few years ago and really got into immersive experiences. Whether it was museum exhibits, interactive art shows or escape rooms, they had fun with that form of entertainment. Puzzah! combines elements from all of those types of entertainment, and adds a form of fun problem solving and decision making.
Q: What makes Puzzah! different from others in this category?
From start to finish we’ve designed games that take you into a different place, another world. The experience is so incredibly unique, and that is thanks both to the painstaking work by our design and fabrication team, but also a credit to the technology that we leverage to build such unique game components.
Q: Tell us about the expansion and the new ideas for rooms.
Our next room (scheduled for Jan 2015) is a heist room. Players need to work together to thwart various types of security systems and ultimately retrieve a rare artifact. The room after that (release is TBD) has participants inside of a sabotaged submarine. There are many more plans that are in the idea phase, we like to focus very intensely on no more than two rooms at a time.
Q: What is the biggest challenge of running a business?
The biggest challenge is making sure every facet of the team is on the same page during the construction of these rooms. We do everything in house. From game design, to electronics, to software, as well as visual design, fabrication of the theme and individual game components, not to mention the marketing side, there are so many parts of the process that need to work simultaneously and be prioritized differently at different times in order to avoid a “clog in the pipes.” We’ve assembled a great team, so this has been a challenge we’ve met with success.
Q: What is the biggest reward of running a business?
The biggest reward is seeing how happy people are coming out of the games. It motivates our team even further to see people have so much fun in the rooms, as much as our customers can’t wait to play new rooms, we cannot wait to build the rooms for them.
Q: What type of clients do you see?
We see it all. Date and double date nights, families with young children, three generations in the room at once having a good time, corporate team building, school field trips and friends. We’re constantly seeing groups in all of those categories come in and have a great time.
We’re open 7 days a week, and we take appointments as early as 11am for the public. We also are rolling out a full corporate and education package for businesses and schools, centered around how you approach problem solving.
Q: What is the best compliment you have received?
David Thomas, one of the two professors of a University of Colorado-Denver class on “Fun” has called us Proprietors of Fun several times. It always brings a smile to our faces.
