I'm now a TERPECA voter! (and other related thoughts)

(UPDATED with new numbers after voting closed)

I'm excited.

When I started my escape room journey in July 2024, I never expected to reach 100 rooms within the next 15 months. Yet here we are! I thought No. 100 was Cabin Cult, but I actually made a mistake with my count, and as it turns out, my 100th room was Motel in Melbourne. D'oh!

Nevertheless, hitting the 100-room milestone means I am now an eligible TERPECA voter! I submitted my application a couple of weeks ago and got it approved in just a day, then uploaded my rankings to the TERPECA Voter Portal.

Aussie Finalists

This year, 43 rooms in Australia earned at least one nomination. I've played 29 of them so far. I'm proud to say that I'm one of a handful of voters to have played all seven of the Aussie Finalists this year (plus Shadow Zen in Osaka):

Nuclear Enrichment - Area 1 Escape Rooms (Project Immersive) (Brisbane)

Carnivorous - Containaphobia (Geelong)

Extraction - The Curium Experience (Melbourne)

Forest of Echoes - Next Level Escape (Australia) (Sydney)

La Rébellion - The Cipher Room (Sydney)

Mr Pepper's Toy Shop - The Cipher Room (Sydney)

Seance - The Cool Space (Sydney)

Although no Australian room was named a Top Room last year (first time since 2021), I'm hopeful that there will be one this year. The rooms with the best chance to make the list are this year's "new" Aussie Finalists: Nuclear Enrichment, Carnivorous, and Seance. Of these, I think Carnivorous probably has the best shot, considering the other two are both former Nominees that didn't hit the nomination threshold last year. That said, it might be a bit of an uphill battle because so few voters have actually played it (only 18 people according to publicly available data on the Voter Portal). It is not unprecedented for a game with so few voters to make the list, but each voter will need to rank it very high for it to have a chance. Such is the disadvantage of being in Australia, where there are fewer voters (only 42 this year) and is geographically inconvenient for North American and European players (where the bulk of enthusiasts reside) to visit.

Global Forecast

In 2024, Magnifico's Circus (now just Magnifico) by Escaparium in Montreal, Canada was named the No. 1 room in the world by TERPECA. It was the most dominant landslide win in TERPECA history, with 42 of the 54 eligible voters (that's 78%!) ranking it as their No. 1 overall. I've actually already booked my trip to Canada next year to play it! Can't wait!

This year, however, Magnifico might actually be the underdog because of a brand new room in Madrid, Spain — Magic Universe by Madland. Quite a few enthusiasts who have played it have over the last couple of months (since the English version became available) said they rank it above Magnifico, but it remains to be seen whether there's enough of a sample size or momentum to take it to the top. Based on publicly available data on the Voter Portal, there were 284 voters who have played Magnifico, but only 140 people who have played Magic Universe. Among them, just 33 people have played both games, and how these people rank them might determine this year's winner.

Some other highly touted new rooms that have a chance to make the Top 20 this year include Lost by Dream Labs in Germany, Monster Mashers by Tales of Torchdale in Belgium, and The Castle of Eternal Suffering in Canada. Given that there were 31 new entries in the Top 100 and 5 new entries in the Top 10 last year, I'd say there's a good chance we're going to see some surprises in 2025.

More thoughts on TERPECA

TERPECA is one of the main tools I use to plan my escape room adventures, along with Morty and Room Escape Artist lists/reviews. I love TERPECA because it's run by a small army of volunteer enthusiasts who are genuinely passionate about the industry. Crucially, it's not a free-for-all where anyone can participate, as nominators and voters need to have played 200 and 100 rooms, respectively, and any conflicts of interest must be disclosed and excluded from the voting process.

TERPECA has been growing steadily every year, but I still feel like it's in its infancy. In 2018, voting was by invite-only; there were only 49 nominators and 70 voters that year, and the list of Top Rooms ended at just 25. This year, there were 734 nominators and 1737 (up from 1391 last year), with 378 Finalists emerging from 1185 Nominees.

I'm still surprised there are actually quite a lot of people who have hit the 100 or 200 room mark but have not applied to be a nominator/voter (and don't intend to). Though it might be a daunting task to rank the Finalists (some veterans have played literally hundreds if not thousands of rooms), I consider it an extremely fun task that allows you to look back on your favourite experiences.

The 2025 Top Rooms list will be announced on December 20, probably during the time I'm playing an escape room in New Zealand!

What is TERPECA?

TERPECA, short for the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts' Choice Award, is basically the Academy Awards of the escape room industry. Before TERPECA was founded by American enthusiast Rich Bragg in 2018, players could generally only consult escape room awards and recommendation lists created by media companies, which were essentially marketing competitions that lacked transparency and independence.

The TERPECA process starts in October each year, when players who have more than 200 real-life escape rooms under their belt can nominate up to 10 of their favourite rooms. Any room that receives a nomination is a "TERPECA nominee", and the rooms that hit the threshold number of nominations (minimum 7 this year) are "TERPECA Finalists". Any room that was in the previous year's Top 100 also automatically qualifies as a Finalist. Then, in November, the list of Finalists is released, and players who have played at least 100 escape rooms can vote on the Finalists (only the ones they have played) by ranking them from best to worst. And finally, in December, the list of Top 100 rooms is announced live on YouTube!