Sabotage Escape - A Black Sabbath Escape Room

To mark the launch of Black Sabbath’s “Sabotage: Super Deluxe Edition”, fans of the heavy metal band can now step into their world in a brand new interactive online adventure. In partnership with Rhino Records and BMG, Brighton-based Bewilder Box has brought the 1970s to life in a short, 15 minute online escape room experience: Sabotage Escape.

In the official Black Sabbath Sabotage: Deluxe Edition online escape room, players take centre stage to solve puzzles, answer trivia, and explore the digital world in order to recover a copy of Sabotage: Super Deluxe Edition.

In a recent statement from Bewilder Box, the game challenges players to,

Plug in your Gibson SG, turn your brain up to 11 and see if you've got what it takes to be The Prince of Smartness in the Sabotage: Deluxe Edition Escape Room.

An immersive promotional launch, for a global audience

The challenge of launching an exciting new product in the wake of global lockdowns was how to connect fans directly to the band in an utterly unique and immersive way from their homes. This is where award winning escape room company Bewilder Box came in.

It’s not the first time Bewilder Box has built an IP escape room game, but when tasked to create Sabotage Escape, Telescape was their first choice. Owner David Middleton describes some of the reasons why,

Given that this project was for such a high profile client, we needed absolute confidence in the platform. Maximum stability across all browsers and devices was a top priority

Partnering with Shaun Shrubsall, The Bewilder Team were able to create a prototype game with relative ease. This proof of concept secured the project, before their team built the full game out in a custom domain as part of the Telescape brand promotional package.

Converting the escape room brief into a live experience

The brief was to create what David describes as a ‘micro escape room’ with three core puzzles anchoring players to the world of Black Sabbath’s Sabotage: Super Deluxe Edition. David explains,

The client wanted content that incorporated the sounds and imagery of the album. We used songs, tracklists release dates, a bit of outside knowledge to reward serious fans and of course the mirror from the iconic front cover

Despite Sabotage Escape’s brevity, the escape room is a great example of a promotional escape room accessible to a mass market audience who may be less familiar with puzzles. The immersive experience needed to be something that all fans could enjoy and therefore it needed to feel authentic.

David explains the mirror puzzle as an example of this as they recorded 30 seconds of footage that would seamlessly trigger on a correct input from players. This guides the audience through a 70s film grain puzzle sequence, in a touching homage to the era.

From here, it was straightforward for the team to build the world of Sabotage Escape around the album content. The game is packed with Easter Eggs and hidden nods to the band’s history, and ultimately takes players on an exploratory journey to uncover the album for themselves.

Sabotage Escape, as Featured in Rolling Stone Magazine

Since launch, Sabotage Escape has been a wide success, featured in publications such as Rolling Stone, Louder Sound, and Total Rock.

Looking back, David explained that Telescape was the best choice for Sabotage Escape, and looks forward to creating more digital escape rooms with the software,

The client wanted content that incorporated the sounds and imagery of the album. We used songs, tracklists release dates, a bit of outside knowledge to reward serious fans and of course the mirror from the iconic front cover

You can try out Sabotage Escape for free at https://play.sabotageescape.com

To try out Telescape for your escape room business, sign up for free on Telescape Live.