Welcome to the new Total Escape Games website–it’s your place for games, in a new and improved, online space.
In 2024, Total Escape Games celebrated our 15th birthday, a special birthday because 15 years is a long time, but also special because it was the first time the longtime management of the store got to celebrate a birthday as the owners.
That 15th birthday celebration during the summer was one of the many things we’ve been working on since taking over as the owners, and this website is one of the huge, important, projects that needed to happen this year.
The third Total Escape Games website is the most attractive and functional website we’ve ever rolled out. If you wander into the Wayback Machine you can find our first website, which was a perfectly functioning two pages; one that automatically linked to our Google event calendar, and a main page that had hours, a phone number, and our email address. It was a Yellow Pages listing for the digital era.
The second website was built in Wix, by me, before it was then fixed by other people so it would function for customers. This new website added some pictures, but was still mostly a place to get contact information and see an event calendar.
In March of 2020 we were forced to add some new functionality to that old website, when Governor Polis and COVID 19 shut down Total Escape Games, and we had no idea when we would open again. When the restrictions were changed so that we could offer pickup we added an online store to the website for the first time; a web store built in Wix. Tim and I came into the store every Wednesday and Saturday to pull orders from the shelves, bag them up, and then wait until we could come to your cars and put your orders in your trunk.
That was a rough time, but thanks to all of our amazing customers, we got through it.
Once we returned to the real world, our webstore had to change, because a Wix store and LightSpeed (our point of sale) don’t share inventory data, so we couldn’t risk selling something in store while someone was also ordering it on the website.
So the webstore became a place for preorders and event registration, but we knew we wanted a new website, and the opportunity to provide a better online shopping experience.
Enter Jason, who not only has far more experience than Tim or I doing this work, but also has spent countless hours learning to do it even better, and with his hard work and dedication we’re now able to show off the new website, and new shopping experience. So what is that experience now, and what is it becoming?
Today, you can shop a limited, curated, selection of products that are currently in the store, and you can shop a limited, curated, selection of upcoming products, distinguished by a ribbon that says Pre-order. Pre-order products include the estimated date of release so that you can know when your product should be ready for pickup. At this time, products for sale on the website are available for in-store pickup only, we do not offer delivery or shipping at this time.
In the future the inventory on the website will continue to grow as we decide which products to add to the website and which we will not list online. Each product we add to the website is a new logistical learning experience, as we figure out new workflows for the picking and holding of online orders, so we will be rolling out new products slowly.
It is possible (meaning we have had conversations) that we may offer local delivery services in the future (for a fee), and maybe eventually grow the webstore to an operation that allows us to ship products to customers who have moved away from us. Neither of those projects has a definitive timeline right now, but when they do have a timeline, we’ll share it with you.
Recently we started the next phase of the webstore by offering a more robust selection of pre-orders. Choosing what new products to order is one of the great challenges of the gaming industry, an industry that sees thousands of new board games every year, as well as hundreds of new RPGs, RPG accessories, play mats, deck boxes, paint colors, and dice sets.
When we have real information, including a release date, we will be adding selected products to the webstore so that you can see what’s coming up. If you want it, place a pre-order, so we know to order some.
Not every new release will be listed for pre-order, because in many cases we don’t have an accurate date far enough in advance. This means many of the pre-order products you’ll see early on are from Asmodee, because they are industry leaders in providing this information early.
You will also see that pre-order products come with shorter and longer lead times based on the type of product. A product we don’t expect to be limited on, like a new Star Wars Legion product, will appear in the store for pre-order the moment they give us enough information, so typically two months in advance.
A product we do expect to be limited or allocated on will NOT appear in the webstore until we have been told how much we will receive. Customer service is, and will always be, job one, at Total Escape Games, and that means we don’t want to take your pre-order on a new product, and then have to tell you that we oversold that product and your pre-order is canceled.
That’s why we won’t list limited products until we know our allocation. This will mostly apply (today) to Magic: the Gathering, Alternate cover D&D, Lorcana, and Star Wars Unlimited products, but that list could change.
In accordance with the agreement we have with Games Workshop, when we add their products to the website the pre-order window will mostly be only one week, and we will only add those pre-orders to the website when a major release is coming up, after they have given us our allocation.
If you would like to order a product and you don’t see it on the website, you can reach out to us via email (store@totalescapegames.com) or on our Discord, where more than 1,500 gamers are gathered talking about all of our favorite games, and your place to play them.
Thank you all for joining us at Total Escape Games, and the new totalescapegames.com, fifteen years in the making. Here’s to fifteen more.
John Stephens
Owner/CFO – Total Escape Games