In a world so affected by the pandemic, trying to keep up team morale can be challenging. So many employees now work from home, it’s hard to replicate those informal “water cooler” moments. Yet people still want to feel connected by something other than TPS reports or workflow bottlenecks. They want to do something fun together.

Enter the Sapphire Palace, which has received a perfect score from Room Escape Artists. See the review here.

Bring Your Team Together with Virtual Escape Rooms

How do you start?  Obviously, you start with your team! Who are the people you work with that you miss seeing on a regular basis? The people who made going to the office more than just doing work. The people that you miss interacting with:

• The one who stopped at your desk and made the day a little brighter;  
• The one who laughed silently with you during that meeting where every possible buzzword imaginable was packed into the presentation;
• The one who showed you the secret stash of really good chocolates in their desk drawer. 

But wait – there are other people too, the ones you don’t know well, or don’t know yet. 

• The new hire who started right as everything was shutting down; 
• The person who makes sure your reimbursement requests get handled quickly;
• The one who keeps the refrigerator stocked so the canned drinks are cold, and makes sure your favorite flavor of mineral water gets ordered.

Any one of these people could turn out to be the person you didn’t realize you need. The one who injects the exact right amount of enthusiasm into your workplace. You might not realize how important they are to your work experience, but you might find out after you spend some off-task time with them.

Why Virtual Team Building Activities Are a Must

Right now, so much team interaction is virtual, conducted over video conferencing. It’s hard to replicate those sidebar conversations you used to have during in-person meetings. But that’s where you make work friends. When you are dealing with things that are ancillary to the work itself. When you are doing something fun. 

The good news is that Palace Games has remote team building activities precisely to solve this problem! Even though the coronavirus has closed in-person escape rooms companies still need ways to get teams working together. Our brilliant Brain Trust put their minds to replicating the team building aspects of an in-person escape room with something that could be done remotely.

The Sapphire Palace does that with an imaginative mix of puzzles and games. The game is best played on a computer in order to have enough screen real estate to run both a browser window and a video conferencing program. 

The Sapphire Palace Virtual Escape Room 

You and your team have been contacted by a mysterious person named Angel, who has enticed you  into a race for a treasure. If you played the Ruby Palace, you already know that things are not entirely what they seem. With the Sapphire Palace, your team is dropped into a rather uncomfortable cell, and have to apply their wits to escape.

This is the genius of the Sapphire Palace, though – because each challenge requires your team to take on a different part of the puzzle. Each player sees a different part of the puzzle, and the team works together to execute the challenge. 

It’s part intellectual puzzle, part arcade game, and with the mix of puzzles your team will often have different experiences. “That one puzzle was my favorite!” “Ugh, that was the one I like the least!” And that’s the beauty of teamwork! Everybody brings their own particular strengths, and everybody has a chance to shine.

You didn’t know that Sheila from HR was a whiz at mental math, and can do algebra to solve sudoku? Or that Fred in operations logged hours playing Space Invaders back in the day, and still has the hand-eye coordination of a young Ender Wiggin? Or that Taylor regularly wins Pub Trivia, and can tell you who Ender Wiggin is?

It’s amazing what you can learn about the people you work with when you play together!

Book PalaceSphere online escape rooms for fun virtual team building!