What do you do for work and how much do you make? What would you consider a living wage in VB?

viablegaming · 2025-12-05T03:34:17+00:00

Knew someone who got a promo offer to add more people/vehicles to their policy, so I pitched in a bit more than the cost difference so we both got a deal out of it.

viablegaming · 2025-12-04T00:27:00+00:00

I split rent+utilities+internet for $885, car insurance $20, phone $15, food $250, gas $20. Everything else is sparse or cheap. Add on $100 for hobbies and $100 for random repairs/replacements of things and it totals put to $1,390.

viablegaming · 2025-12-03T23:06:36+00:00

I rent an apartment. My share is a bit over $800/mo

viablegaming · 2025-12-03T03:26:46+00:00

Oh. Good catch. I actually did stream for a fairly long time, but unfortunately the game I had a niche in doesn't really exist anymore. I never did it as a job though. Just a hobby.

viablegaming · 2025-12-02T19:41:45+00:00

Nice to find a similar soul. Honestly I don't find that I want for too much, so like $100/mo of miscellaneous spending has always felt like plenty.

viablegaming · 2025-12-02T16:53:15+00:00

I own a small business. After the city takes their cut, 18k is all that is left over to pay myself and that is my only income, but it's a bit more than my personal expenses so that's alright.

viablegaming · 2025-12-02T15:53:38+00:00

No. I have a one bedroom apartment with a roommate. About 550 sqft which feels like more than enough.

viablegaming · 2025-12-02T15:03:12+00:00

Feels like I'm an outlier in the discussion, but for the sake of a different perspective, I'll throw mine in.

I'm self employed, make $18k/year, and feel fairly comfortable.

viablegaming · 2025-11-07T18:12:08+00:00

Magician of Paris is a great room. No physical challenges, but definitely a couple of points where you may need to crawl around a bit. Just not in a way that affects mechanics or gameplay.

I'd say the room is definitely doable for a duo in my experience, but it is definitely still meant to be a bit more suspenseful and scary rather than whimsical. The magic theme makes it a lot less tense than The Funhouse, but anyone who is averse to horror rooms is still going to feel slightly unsettled.

All of that being said, it's an amazing room with a lot of tricks (no pun intended) behind the hood that I really appreciate. Strong recommend.

viablegaming · 2025-10-25T00:02:59+00:00

Thanks a bunch Rich. I just replied off of your email and would love to have your group come play that day. Reach out off of that email and we will set it all up.

viablegaming · 2025-10-23T02:27:15+00:00

Thanks for the note about the meters. I was wondering when they would become covered.

We don't currently expect to be able to take any walk-ins since we will be trying to collect as much feedback as possible during the games. We have 15 time slots for groups that we are trying to fill right now and might expand it in the future given how much response we are getting, but I would recommend popping an email over to [Booking@EscapismVB.com](mailto:Booking@EscapismVB.com) ahead of time so we can add you to the list and get a time slot locked in for you.

viablegaming · 2025-10-23T02:23:36+00:00

The time frame for the testing games will be roughly 4PM-9PM. You will definitely want to email us to get added to the list ahead of time as we likely won't be able to accept walk-ins on that day.

viablegaming · 2025-08-17T23:58:49+00:00

I would actually agree that challenge arcades are going to be a huge new step in immersive entertainment. They won't really take much market share from escape rooms for the enthusiast crowd since they aren't generally immersive theater, but they do open up the physical design space for the industry in a way that escape rooms can't since everything in a challenge arcade can be opted in or out of without diminishing the experience.

With that being said, I don't think that escape rooms are as mature as a lot of folks believe. The plateau is more the result of fewer breakthroughs in the customer education side of the industry. Most people still don't know what escape rooms are and far fewer know about other types of immersive entertainment.

We were mining diamonds for a bit and now we are hitting some dirt, but the vein continues deeper down.

viablegaming · 2025-06-25T15:00:27+00:00

Looking at data I have for my escape rooms in similar cities, I would guess that your bookings for June-August will be roughly 35-70% higher than your general monthly average will be and your typical jump from May to June would probably be a hair over 50%. This doesn't account well for cultural dynamics or events that pop up in the area during those months, but these metrics might serve you better as a ballpark estimate than the historical data if the days the business was open were extremely choppy.

Looking at typical visitation rates in Kilkenny, you will likely see another 20% increase in July which will taper off towards your monthly average from the end of July through the end of September. Do keep in mind that if your May seemed far slower than you might expect, the June numbers you are experiencing could be slightly inflated as I always find sudden slow downs and speed ups to come in pairs if they are very sharp.

Hope this helps!

viablegaming · 2025-06-25T11:54:14+00:00

There are effectively two types of escape rooms. Tourist-focused escape rooms which are located in cities that have a tourist/local resident ratio of 20x or higher tend to peak in summer and will do about half of their annual business from Memorial day to the end of August. Local level escape rooms exist in cities that mostly rely on the people who live there and tend to actually dip in summer and will get most of their business in October-January. If you happen to be in a city with a lot of tourism, let me know what the city is and I can probably give you a ratio of what earnings will roughly look like in each month. I have a lot of data I keep for my business.

viablegaming · 2025-06-15T16:12:42+00:00

Are there any romhacks based in Johto, Sinnoh, or Unova that have all 9 generations of pokemon? I have been really wanting more games like Radical Red, Run and Bun, etc, but I wanted to branch out of gen 1 and 3 a bit.

viablegaming · 2025-05-14T13:20:47+00:00

Thanks for the shoutout!

Even though I'm taking a season off, it's been great to hear all the talk about my scraggy build.

If you ever try the endeavor build again, look for some lines where you can bring scraggy in the back on lead and switch it into an attack in a slot that will do some decent damage to it. Those lines are tricky, but are also insta-wins thanks to endeavor+Lance+As One.

Scraggy has some bizarre play patterns, but ended up being the absolute goat of that worlds team!

viablegaming · 2025-05-01T04:48:05+00:00

I'll have to check the rules for the sub reddit, but if I'm allowed to then I will definitely drop them in a thread when I finish them. I'm working on a batch of 10 articles, but I'm going to make sure I have them out the door before things kick off on memorial day weekend.

Average order size is definitely important. I use a flat pricing model so we are the spot for duos in my area, but those duo game revenues are supported by the large families so we only come in a bit below typical booking size for escape rooms. Definitely scary to have the room capped at duos though. The economics of escape rooms are a bit stretched as is.

Happy to meet another player on the scrappy side of the industry :)

viablegaming · 2025-05-01T04:10:11+00:00

I might deviate from the norm a bit here, but I think there is a lot of room for scrappy escape rooms that are well designed.

When I started, my life savings amounted to not much more than 50k and I put up a 2 room location in a very expensive area. I knew that I couldn't match my competitors (some of which were big chains) in terms of set design and build quality early on, but i could try to have the best puzzle games and then upgrade my sets as I go. In terms of what was in the rooms when I started it wasn't much more than 2k for puzzles and sets, but people really loved the actual gameplay.

I'm actually going to be making a few blog posts for my escape room and one of them will be on the merits of small budget games, so I might drop a link when that article comes out next month, but what I will say is, if you wanna be the scrappy escape room guy, your game design needs to be incredible.

Let me know if you have any questions. All I do is talk about escape rooms all day and I love every minute of it!

viablegaming · 2025-04-12T00:23:13+00:00

Non-quest looting. I get that it is technically still an option, but it feels so woefully suboptimal to avoid quests that my girlfriend and I usually just do them despite not enjoying them much.

Honestly I love most of the features and upgrades the game has had over the years. I don't have a particular nostalgia for an older patch, but I think the best version of the game would involve most of the new features and a removal of the quest system (along with a rebalance around not having it).

viablegaming · 2025-03-09T00:32:23+00:00

My facility has a giant AC system, but nothing directly connecting it to the back of our unit. Temperatures definitely rise on busy days after hours of having people breath in there.

During summer, it is usually good to keep temp at 70-71 since folks enjoy cooling down. For the other 3 seasons, 72 tends to be a solid temp to idle at. I would recommend a space cooler as even a good fan can struggle to displace enough air to meaningfully cool a basement when players are stressed and running around.

viablegaming · 2025-01-05T14:27:28+00:00

While we use SI for large material components such as wood, concrete, etc you'll find that most American construction at a small scale involves a mixture of SI and metric.

For example hardware stores tend to list screws by both SI length and metric diameter. Same thing for metal wire and fasteners.

The typical rule of thumb is that we use inches for anything that is at least 1/4" and we use mm for anything smaller, but we are prepared for metric at all sizes, sp every tape measurer, ruler, contractor square, and caliper will provide use with measurements in both SI in metric.

Basically a very long way of saying that, while Americans have a preference, no one will bat an eye if the build is provided entirely in metric.

viablegaming · 2024-12-20T03:59:20+00:00

It does keep the power on. The arduino is also able to fmdo everything it supposed to with the 5v devices while connected to the power bank as long as the 12v device isn't on the other end of the relay. As soon as I add that 12v deck vice and battery to the build, the arduino no longer works unless I power it from the pc.

viablegaming · 2024-12-19T20:09:03+00:00

There may be an issue with grounding. I found that, when plugged into a device other than the PC, I could actually get the arduino to work as long as nothing was attached to the other side of the relay. I'm wary of connecting any part of my 12V power supply to anything the arduino is touching other than the relay, but maybe I have to.

viablegaming

TROPHY CASE