Let’s Talk About Environmental Storytelling

Ronan Jennings - August 2025

Environmental Storytelling. It might not be a phrase you’ve come across, but it's definitely something you’ve encountered, and it’s the backbone of almost every single escape room.

If you're unfamiliar with the term, environmental storytelling is essentially exactly what it sounds like. Instead of using speech, written text or dialogue to tell a story, it’s telling the narrative through the design of the physical space. It's character work through details in the environment. It's plot development through set decoration. This is old news for video game developers, but for an industry all about exploring real life rooms, it’s something not enough escape rooms take full advantage of.

I’m going to talk about setting the scene and building a believable space, telling minute stories in individual vignettes, adding multiple layers of history to your room, and of course discussing how all of these can be used to influence and guide gameplay. Along the way, I’ll use our own game The Murder of Max Sinclair as a case study for each point. (There’ll be some very minor spoilers, but nothing that would affect your experience playing the game.)

Let’s start with setting the scene.

At the basic level, this is just decoration and theming. Does the room look like a laboratory? A prison? A pirate ship? If your game is set in a haunted castle, then you’ll want stone walls and dangling chains. If it’s a spaceship then you’ll need viewscreens, flashing lights, and big buttons labelled “Orbital thrust control”.

This isn’t groundbreaking, this is what basically every escape room does - set the game in a particular theme and build a room that resembles that theme. But sometimes, that’s as far as the process goes. It’s easy to think that, once the room looks and feels appropriate to the setting, all it needs are puzzles and you’re done. Badda bing badda boom that’s an escape room.

But that’s not good enough. You’ve made a room that has the aesthetics of a lab or a pirate ship, but doesn’t behave like one. If you want the players to get immersed in your story, to actually treat the place like a pirate ship instead of the windowless office space it probably is, then you need to make them believe that this place is real. You need to create an authentic, lived-in world. So the basic decoration is just a starting point, and there are two major things you need to consider before you go any further.

The first is asking what makes this particular environment different to others of the same theme. And I don’t just mean that your pirate room has a cool prop or a unique piece of decoration that other pirate rooms don’t. I mean what makes this individual pirate ship different to other pirate ships within the world and universe of your story? What’s the ship called? Where’s it going? What cargo is it carrying? Has it been in any battles recently, or is it preparing for battle soon? Who’s the Captain, the Quartermaster? How do they each run the ship and do their jobs in a way that’s unique to them?

We don’t need 10 pages of written out lore and backstory, we just need a sense of the personalised history to the room. Boxes of cargo are piled high, marked with a stamp of the Spanish navy. Charts and maps show a route planned to Cuba. Layers of sea salt and barnacles have built up due to overly-long voyages, and the stockpile of cannonballs is running low. The quartermaster’s ledger is meticulous, but the Captain’s quarters are messy. This is also where you set the tone. Huge curved cutlasses, impractically large treasure chests, and characters with names like “Long Billy Silver Sheers” suggests this has a similar tone to The Goonies or Muppets Treasure Island, whereas dark lighting, stains of blood, and cramped quarters gives a sense of gritty historical realism.

This brings us to the other thing you need to consider: How was this space actually, practically used? Where do the pirates keep their cannonballs, and is it within reach of the cannons themselves? Does the Quartermaster have his own office, or is he sharing the communal space with the rest of the crew? Are there tables and chairs for relaxation, and a handy bottle of rum nearby? The main guns probably aren’t near to the sleeping quarters, and you wouldn’t hoist the mainsail from the ship’s brig.

A pirate ship is especially difficult for this, since a lot of what we expect to see would be on the main deck looking over the open ocean, but carefully picking your escape room theme is another discussion. Regardless of your theme, who are the characters who inhabit this space and what do they do here? It’s helpful to imagine the characters walking back into the room, as if it’s a normal day, and visualising how they would act. What are their work spaces? Their living spaces? Do they have enough room, and how are things personalised? What evidence is there of the characters’ unique quirks and traits?

In The Murder of Max Sinclair, we gave this a lot of thought. Max is a private investigator, and the game is set in his office. We visualised him doing his job, spending hours and hours in the office. We figured it made sense for Max to have one desk for admin and greeting clients, and another for his intense detective work. The first desk is near the front door, with his name plate visible the second you walk in. This immediate area, where his clients would get their first impression of him, is full of posters and advertisements showing off his skills and services, and his boxing trophy sits proudly at the desk opposite the chair where visitors are invited to sit. On Max’s side of this desk are emails, letters, and a cash box full of cheques. 

Behind this desk, out of reach of ordinary clients, lies his other desk. This is where the real work gets done. It’s messier, facing a pinboard covered in newspaper articles. Grainy photos of Max’s investigation targets, and his personal audio recordings narrating his investigations are all found here. And of course, it’s only a couple steps from the drinks cabinet, for when those long nights of hard work need a glass of whiskey to help things along. Complete this with a note about his mum’s birthday, a letter from his wife, and a couple other personal items, and it starts to feel like a real, living detective’s office.

Telling SPECIFIC Stories

Now that the scene is set, and we’ve created a believable environment, it’s time to give the sense that things have HAPPENED. Specific, individual things. Moments that have occurred, and scenes that have played out before you ever stepped foot in here. If the previous section was about constructing a believable status quo, this is about showing how the equilibrium has been broken. These are environmental vignettes. 

Think about the morning after a party, when you haven’t cleared up and your home is still a mess. The empty bottles all over the living room speak for themselves, but whose socks are these? There’s broken glass in the kitchen sink, and a spoon in the bathroom. You can walk around and visualise the events of the previous night, remembering or imagining how things ended up where they did. It’s especially satisfying when a few items collaborate to tell a complete story. A small tub of ice cream, with no cutlery nearby, abandoned half way through eating? I think someone forgot their spoon in the bathroom!

It’s a kind of archeology, or a crime scene investigation. And it’s serendipitous when things line up like that in real life, but in game design we can make sure of it.

You might be familiar with vignettes like these in Bethesda games like Fallout and Skyrim. These games love creating little moments for you to stumble upon, self contained stories in the form of a few well-placed props or pieces of decoration. You might find a skeleton in a bathtub surrounded by empty bottles of liquor, or a skeleton in a cage, with a tray of rotten food just out of reach, or a skeleton in a room of overturned furniture, covered in claw marks, and clutching a warning of dangerous beasts. 

…they really like their skeletons.

These little moments tell small self-contained stories that paint a brief but vivid picture about something that happened. Imagine an escape room set in a laboratory, with a large lever surrounded by warning labels, and a note in scrawled handwriting saying “DO NOT ACTIVATE”. Except that we find the lever already in the ON position, and there are signs of visible scorch marks on the walls and floors around it. Someone clearly didn’t heed the warnings, and had to deal with the consequences.

In The Murder of Max Sinclair, vignettes are a powerful tool for conveying the actual moment of Max’s death. I’ll be vague about the specifics for the sake of spoilers, but the position of Max’s body, the placement of footprints on the floor, and other pieces of damage around the room are enough to piece together how the altercation played out. It’s very satisfying to see players physically reenact the events, each playing different characters as they move throughout the room and reconstruct the scene for themselves

It’s a smaller detail, but one mini-vignette I’m particularly pleased with is the story of Max’s boxing career. A poster of a boxing match is mounted on the wall of his office, advertising the Match of the Year, with Max listed as one of the combatants. This poster is framed and placed with pride near his main desk, atop which sits a trophy, naming him as the champion fighter. It’s a simple story in two parts: Max fought in a boxing match, Max won the boxing match. Neat.

These moments can add simple pieces of personalisation, or a detailed forensic look at specific events. But you can’t break the status quo if no status quo has been established. That’s why these first two points need to work in tandem. Build a believable environment and fill it with realistic characters, and then show what happens when their schedule is disrupted, when they leave a mess, when they’re brutally murdered in the middle of their room, and leave just enough of a trace for us to figure out the details for ourselves.

Adding Layers of History

And this is pretty good. If you wanted, you could stop here and you’d have a believable environment with a nice amount of history to it. But what if you had a little more history?

Stumbling throughout your house in the aftermath of your party, you might find the living room partially cleared, with a bin bag full of empty bottles. In between the time of the party happening, and you now waking up, someone else had tried to be helpful and started to clear up. Maybe you’ve been very negligent and the party was actually two days ago. The place is still a mess, but some kitchen space has been cleared from where your housemate’s been making food. Some bottles have been pushed to the side, replaced by a laptop and important documents. An angry post-it note on the fridge tells you to get your act together and clean the place up.

The main event has happened, but time has continued on. Three distinct layers of history are now visible, with the bottles showing evidence of the party, the bin bags hinting at someone’s attempt to tidy up in its aftermath, and your housemate trying to go about their normal life the next day.

When applying this to game design, you need to be careful things don’t get jumbled. Things could get very convoluted if you don’t clearly distinguish what belongs to each layer of the timeline. If another character has entered the space after certain events have taken place, maybe they have something unique about them to help them stand out from everyone else. In a laboratory of labcoats and precise sterile equipment, muddy bootprints with a heavy military tread track their way across the room. Those don’t belong here! They lead to a door that’s clearly been forced open, with the delicate equipment inside broken and destroyed. Clearly someone else has been here before you.

And so long as you’re able to delineate these layers, you can add as many of them as you like, and even give each one as much detail and depth as your original status quo. 

In Max Sinclair, we have a few layers of history at play. There’s Max’s original status quo as described above, and then there’s the discovery that sent him spiraling into his latest investigation. A close look at his things shows he’s been distracted recently. Angry emails from clients complain about unfinished jobs, his cheques are dated from months ago and haven’t been cashed, and evidence about his latest obsession is kept locked out of sight. Progressing further in time, there’s the act of his actual murder and the blood, weapons, and body that were left behind then, finally followed by the ongoing police investigation. This is an active crime scene, and a forensics team have already done a sweep of the room, and left behind various pieces of equipment for the players to use.

But… is that all that happened? Because you always have the option to not delineate these layers, and let the blur of history be a deliberate choice. Which of these items got here first? Did these two vignettes play out side by side, or weeks apart from each other? Depending on your design, you might want that to be clear, or let the process of separating the layers of history become part of the game.

Whoever killed Max wanted his body to be found in a particular way, and wanted the scene of his death to paint a specific picture. They did their own bit of environmental storytelling, deliberately arranging objects and items to tell a narrative of their own choosing. This particular layer of history has been deliberately obscured, and an important part of the gameplay is slowly peeling this layer away from the others, and figuring out what’s from the real course of events, and what’s part of the fake, constructed scene.

A lot of escape rooms pride themselves on making it feel like you’re the first people who’ve walked into this place. And from a purely customer service perspective, that’s great. It makes the experience feel like it was specially crafted for each visitor.

But that’s not how the real world operates, and making a space feel lived in can add a lot to its believability. How was this space practically used, what things have been left in strange places, and how did its occupants behave? Who pulled that lever, and what did it actually do?

Environmental Design and Game Design

By thinking about how a space was actually used, by imagining the characters living and working in this place, and by adding layers of history to the narrative, not only can it improve the feel of the space, but it can improve the feel of the game. Players can use their knowledge of real world environments and their natural instincts about navigating a space to help lead them through the escape room. You’re looking for a copy of someone’s personal notes? Try their desk drawer. You need a high-energy-proton emitter? Try the “NO ENTRY - DANGEROUS EQUIPMENT” locker. 

And suddenly this is starting to guide our puzzle design. Rather than expecting players to scour every inch of the room when they first enter, we can guide their investigation with context clues. The forensics team in Max Sinclair left a report with points of interest worth investigating further. The security chief in Radio Nowhere complains about a certain character leaving security codes lying with their personal belongings.

Imagine a laboratory, where a machine will only turn on when blasted by high energy protons. Players will figure they’re looking for our aforementioned proton emitter, and will need to first get into the Dangerous Equipment locker. A warning label tells us that only high security personnel are granted access to the lockers, so let’s find some ID badges and start searching the belongings of the highest ranked characters. This encourages players to stop and think about their surroundings, to do deductive reasoning and engage more deliberately with your game instead of just tearing it apart.

This is particularly important to the design of our games. In Max Sinclair, you’re not there to solve puzzles, you’re there to uncover a conspiracy, be a detective, and solve a mystery. Peeling back the layers of storytelling is the entire point of the game. The truth about who Max was and what happened to him isn’t a backdrop to the game. It is the game. Players are asked for their opinions of Max’s habits, relationships, and personality. They’re asked what his last case was, what it was that he discovered, and of course they’re asked how and why he died. And the game is built around letting players slowly come to understand these things as they spend more time in Max’s office, getting to know the man himself.

But if your game is about codes and keys, then it can only be improved by adding more details. Good quality Signposting - the designer’s ways of subtly hinting to players how to find and solve puzzles - can make or break a room. How often have players complained that they had no idea what to do or where to find the next part of the game? This would surely be solved by adding a big glowing PUZZLE HERE sign, but that’s not very subtle. But by building signs and labels into the world in a way that makes sense, you can hide these helpful guidelines in plain sight. Better yet, if you make your room function like a real and familiar environment, players might not need any signs at all, and could just instinctively gravitate to where they need to be. An email from a client in Max’s inbox is signed off as J.M. with no other details? It’s almost every player’s first instinct to open up his cash box and see if any cheques have a name that matches. When this happens, they’re not treating the room like a game, or an escape room, they’re treating it like a pirate ship, a laboratory, or a detective’s office.

And when that magical moment happens, it just feels good. All of this detail, and history, and believability makes the space feel real, feel lived in, and feel like you’ve stepped into an actual place, instead of just a thematic backdrop.

Immersion is what every escape room is looking for. The reason we give these things a theme is because we want you to forget that you’re playing a game, and for a couple hours step foot into a new world, a new story, and become someone else for an afternoon. The more realistic you make the space, the more immersed your players will feel. On one hand you could invest tens of thousands of pounds into immaculate set decoration to create the exact tone and look for the room, or you can think a little more about the actual real life space, and add a bit of history. Or if you can afford it, do both! Whatever it takes to best convey the reality of the world you’re building.

In our followup game, Radio Nowhere, we had to approach things differently to Max. The difference with Radio is that it's not just a case study about one man - it’s a whodunit workplace drama about 5 different characters. They all work here, they all spend huge amounts of their lives in this one studio environment. And so it becomes all the more complicated. Where do they each work? What are their individual jobs? Who has their own workstation and who’s forced to share? Which characters get along with each other, and which hate their guts? Who works the most closely together, and what secrets do they share? And how do we convey all of this in a believable and understandable manner to players who are walking in with almost no context?

Giving characters distinct styles of speech, roles in the workplace, and zones where they work helps a lot. The more real we make it, the easier it is for players to make sense of. It’s a fun challenge that we’re still constantly working on, making adjustments all the time based on how players react and behave, and how well they understand this set of characters. 

Each game will have its own set of requirements and a best way to approach the environmental storytelling, but never settle for mediocrity “because it’s just an escape room”, never fail to treat it like a real space “because people don’t care about that”, never break the reality of your own experience “because the story doesn’t matter”. It does matter, and it always matters. However thin your actual plot or narrative might be, players want to be immersed in the world you’ve created, so give them the tools to do it and give them something to latch on to.

Next time you’re playing an escape room, think about the story it's telling. Not just with the words that are spoken, and the text that is written, but how the space informs the narrative. Did it give a sense of the characters? Did it establish stakes or relationships? Did it set a tone? Did you get a sense of the history? And if you’re designing a game, care about the world you’re creating. Give us a real environment with characters who live and breathe in here, and let us believe they just stepped out only minutes ago. Give us specific details, give us mysteries to unravel, give us vague hints about long lost histories. The characters aren’t here to talk to us, so have the room speak for them. Let the world be their mouthpiece. Have the environment tell a story. The more real you make it, the more real the players will treat it. And that will always, always make it better.

Bring your world to life, and let people play in it.