> how about designing the room and having your friends bash their heads against the wall.

I think you underestimate the skill and time it requires to make engaging puzzles.

The big chains will solve the repeatability issue by swapping puzzles around their world locations. I assume they are doing this already.

This is a cool idea, but also a pretty unsolved problem, even in digital games. Heck, computers can't even procedurally generate decent crossword puzzles.

Best comparison point I can think of are roguelikes, but even if you can figure out a way to make custom hardware build-out easy, roguelikes largely work by making replayability cheap. It's hard to build an on-ramp to teach players about the interactions of complex systems when each playthrough costs them $50+ and takes an hour plus transpotation time.

is disagree. while it may be expensive it’s far from unsolved (im the virtual world of course)

We played a variant where you "find treasure." This made reconfiguration simple!

i was thinking a blend of physical and virtual but that may increase the cost of building the escape room significantly.