Room reset checklists for escape rooms

The idea

An escape room game ruined by an unreset prop is a direct refund, often $150+, plus the one-star review that outlasts it. Resets happen in 15-minute turnover windows, frequently by teenage part-time staff, and the checklist is a laminated sheet nobody can prove was actually followed. When a game breaks, the owner can’t even tell who reset the room.

Booking platforms like Bookeo and Resova own the reservation, and stop there. Nothing owns the 15 minutes between bookings, which is where the money is actually lost. Per-room digital checklists with required photo confirmation on the failure-prone items, plus a log of who reset what and when, converts an accountability black hole into a record.

Who pays

The buyer is the escape room owner, typically running 3 to 6 rooms per location, who pays $29/mo per location because a single prevented refund covers three months. Owners are concentrated and reachable: escape room owner Facebook groups, industry conferences like TransWorld, and the Room Escape Artist community. Multi-location operators are the natural expansion revenue.

MVP scope

• Per-room checklist builder with ordered, photo-required items
• Tablet kiosk runner with PIN access and staff initials
• Photo capture with client-side compression on flagged items
• Complete reset log with timestamps, durations, and photo evidence
• Incident flag linking a reported problem back to the responsible run
• Skip for v1: booking system integration, maintenance ticketing, staff scheduling, multi-language checklists, native apps

Build ResetRun, a reset-verification tool for escape room venues. Stack: Next.js App Router, Supabase (Postgres, storage, auth). Bill with Stripe Checkout.

Core flow: the owner builds a checklist per room: ordered items like relock the 4-digit padlock to 0000, return the key to the drawer, rewind the tape player. Each item can be marked photo-required, used for the props that historically get missed. Between bookings, staff open the venue's tablet page (a PIN-based kiosk mode, no individual logins to fumble), pick the room, enter their initials, and work through the checklist. Photo-required items open the camera and upload to Supabase storage. Completing a run stamps who, when, and how long it took; skipping a required photo blocks completion.

Pages: kiosk checklist runner optimised for tablets, room and checklist editor with drag-to-reorder items, reset log (filterable by room, staff member, and date, with photo thumbnails), incident view to flag a bad reset back to the run that caused it, settings and billing.

Implementation details: make the runner work offline-tolerant with optimistic local state and background sync, since escape room basements have terrible wifi; compress photos client-side before upload.

Pricing: $29/mo per location via Stripe, 30-day trial.