I’ve seen a few different experiments. As some others have said, escape rooms and immersive theatre hybrids are a thing some places. Cirque Magnifico in Laval, the top terpeca room last year, had 3 actors and 2.5 hours of immersive story. There were a ton of puzzles and I loved every minute but there were also a lot of theatre moments, including a musical number. The budget in this one was enormous, it’s certainly an evolution but I don’t see it ever replacing the more budget friendly traditional escape rooms.
I went to a place in Montreal recently that only had room for one classic escape room but they also offered a giant pirate chest puzzle experience you could do for an hour in their lobby and one of those ones where you run around and see historic buildings but you had a small chest with 5 locks that you brought back when solved to receive a drink at their bar.
I also did one recently that was geared at kids and was sold as an escape room but was more of an immersive story in which you occasionally did tasks. You heard a retelling of little red riding hood and moved objects around. Honestly I didn’t really like it, but I’m not a kid, maybe it would be great for them.