Community Highlights: Meet Heather Chandler of Whole Brain Escape

Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Chandler.

Hi Heather, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
In late 2018, I was thinking about my next move. I’d spent 25 years as a video game producer and was ready for a new challenge. I started my career at Activision, where I worked on games for the original PlayStation; then, decades later, I worked as a Senior Producer on the hit game Fortnite. In between, dozens of games at multiple game studios. A great adventure! But what to do next?

My husband was in a similar situation. He’d worked on video games at Sony, Sega, and a dozen other studios. But he wanted a new challenge.

A mutual friend suggested that we create our own escape room. We’d always enjoyed them but never thought of it as a business opportunity.

After some research, we decided to do it. Instead of an experience focused on screens and game controllers, we created a real-world puzzle game that you’d have to solve with your hands while trapped in a room with friends and family. So we opened Whole Brain Escape. It’s been a great experience!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Video game development was wonderful but not without challenges. Long hours, production issues, the inevitable conflicts and disagreements over the creative process or the business decisions… It was fun, but it was still a job.

Opening an escape room, on the other hand, was a complete inversion of much of what I became accustomed to in the game industry. Instead of managing hundreds of seasoned video game programmers and designers, my team consisted of a half-dozen high school students, most of whom had little or no work experience. Developing a training process was a learning experience for all of us. In addition, instead of updating the game with software, we updated our escape rooms with power drills and wood glue. It was a new approach to creating fun gameplay.

Then, of course, a year after we opened, Covid-19 hit, and I had to close my business for several months.

While I waited, I shifted my focus to producing puzzle games that people could play at home. I also partnered up with the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Downtown Business Association, and local neighborhoods to offer outdoor puzzle games that people could play while socially distancing.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve been producing video games since the 1990s, and I’ve worked for some of the biggest companies in the world (Electronic Arts, Activision, Ubisoft, Epic Games, and many more). However, one of my favorite games was released by a group you’ve never heard of!

I worked as a producer on Never Alone, which was released on the Nintendo Switch and several other platforms. It was based on a traditional tale of the Iñupiaq people of Alaska and was created by the first indigenous-owned video game developer and publisher in US history.

It won a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award, was featured at the Smithsonian and is currently the focus of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Earlier this year, I traveled to Washington to play Never Alone at the Smithsonian, and it was a high point of my career. While there, I stopped to take a photo next to a statue of myself, which was on display for an unrelated exhibit.

Then I opened an escape room, which is a fun activity where you team up with family and friends to solve riddles, decipher codes, and unlock the answers.

Now, I’m hard at work on a new project — A HAUNTING IN APEX. It’s an escape room in a box, so you can enjoy the escape room experience at home! The game, for 1-4 players, is set in a spooky haunted house in Apex, North Carolina. It’s fun for all ages and contains puzzles that will test your wits! The Kickstarter for A Haunting In Apex goes live in late October.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.wholebrainescape.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholebrainesc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wholebrainesc/
• Other: https://www.wholebrainescape.com/hauntedapex/