Christopher Edge's Escape Room adventures

About Author

Christopher Edge returns to his Escape Room world in Escape Room: Game Zero, where the stakes in this thrilling virtual world become ever-higher.

Christopher Edge is an award-winning children's author whose books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Four of his novels have been nominated for the prestigious CILIP Carnegie Medal.

Before becoming a writer, Christopher worked as an English teacher, editor and publisher - any job that let him keep a book close to hand. He grew up in Manchester and now lives in Gloucestershire with his wife and family, close to his local library.

You can find him on X as @edgechristopher or visit his website.

Interview

Escape Room: Game Zero (Nosy Crow)

June 2025

Christopher Edge returns to his Escape Room world in Escape Room: Game Zero, where the stakes in this thrilling virtual world become ever-higher.

Expect puzzles, action and danger in this virtual escape room, where nothing is as it seems... When Eden finds a way into The Escape, she soon realises that this world of puzzles and peril has no way out. She must find the keys, climb the levels and meet her fate...

Read a chapter from Escape Room: Game Zero Read a chapter from Escape Room

Review: "A fantastically futuristic, modern and thought-provoking sci-fi adventure quest."

Q&A with Christopher Edge

"I never think of myself as being a science fiction writer as nowadays the themes that previously have been the preserve of
science fiction such as artificial intelligence and quantum physics are increasingly just part of everyday life."

1. Thank you for joining us on ReadingZone to talk about Escape Room: Game Zero. You're known for exploring scientific concepts through your stories - do you describe yourself as a science fiction writer? How do you keep up to date with scientific developments?

I never think of myself as being a science fiction writer as nowadays the themes that previously have been the preserve of science fiction such as artificial intelligence and quantum physics are increasingly just part of everyday life. I think science and stories both try to do similar things in exploring the big questions about life, the universe and everything, and for me the starting point of every story is always a character or a situation and then sometimes a scientific concept gives me a way into exploring this story idea.

I was somebody who didn't enjoy science at school, but nowadays I really enjoy reading authors of popular science books such as Carlo Rovelli and flicking through the New Scientist magazine.

2. What can readers expect in your two Escape books, Escape Room and Escape Room: Game Zero?

In Escape Room, Ami receives an invitation to The Escape, which is the ultimate escape room game, but in Escape Room: Game Zero, The Escape is a whole new world and Eden discovers it's only a game if you can stop playing... These are action-packed, page-turning adventures filled with lots of twists and turns, and I hope readers might find their minds gently exploding when they get to the end of each story!

3. What drew you back to the world of Escape Room for another adventure? Should readers have read Escape Room before reading Game Zero?

Without giving away any spoilers, Escape Room had a rather open ending, so I think in the back of my mind I always knew that this was a world I'd like to return to and explore further. Escape Room: Game Zero is a brand-new Escape Room adventure, so you don't need to have read Escape Room first before reading Game Zero, although there are links between the two books so if you have read Escape Room this might give a different flavour to some of the scenes and characters mentioned in Escape Room: Game Zero.

4. What inspired you to link an escape room to gaming? Are you a gamer, and how 'real' do you understand games will become?

Escape rooms and video games are both escapes from the real world. Nowadays, we seem to live our lives in more than one world at a time: the real and the digital, and I wanted to bring these ideas together to explore the power games give us to reimagine the world.

When I was growing up, I was a member of the first gaming generation who all convinced our parents to buy home computers as they would really help us with our school work, and then just spent our time playing games like Elite and Asteroids, while today I enjoy open-world games like The Legend of Zelda where the whole world of the game is built for play.

Escape Room: Game Zero draws on my own experiences as a gamer, but also future trends in the gaming industry, which sometimes seem to be aiming for a facsimile of reality which is rather frightening!

5. Eden enters the Escape Room game via a starling murmuration, why did you decide to use this device and what kinds of puzzles do Eden and Ted have to solve in order to escape Game Zero?

The way into the story came to me when I was standing in my back garden watching a huge murmuration of starlings as they flocked in shape-shifting patterns across the sky, and as they swirled over my head like a loading circle, I thought to myself, what if this was a way into The Escape. Although it's set in what's ostensibly a virtual world, many of the settings found in Escape Room: Game Zero are inspired by real-world settings such as the ship's graveyard found in the deserts of Namibia's skeleton coast.

From death-defying physical challenges to more cerebral riddles, the puzzles that Ted and Eden solve are all linked to the themes of the story as they try to find the keys to unlock the world.

6. Can you tell us a little more about your two main characters, Eden and Ted, and the roles they play in the game?

In Escape Room: Game Zero, Eden is transported into the world of The Escape and finds herself living the game for real, but for Ted he's using a VR-headset to explore The Escape and so initially thinks that Eden is just an NPC - a non-player character. This means their approaches to the game are rather different as if Ted gets something wrong and 'dies' in the game he can just press continue and start again, but for Eden 'game over' really would mean 'game over' for good!

7. What kinds of questions do you pose for your characters through the story?

The games that they play and the challenges they face pose questions for Eden and Ted about the truth of the world around them, but they also allow each character to find out things about themselves. I don't want to give away too many spoilers, but The Escape is a dangerous place so Eden and Ted have to draw on all their resources to make it to the end of the game - that's if it's really a game...

8. What kinds of questions do you hope Game Zero will raise in your readers' minds?

This is a difficult question to answer as every reader might take something different away from the story, but I hope that Escape Room: Game Zero reminds readers of the power we all have to imagine a new world.

9. What area of science are you currently most excited about and the new developments that are around the corner? And what kinds of concepts are you planning to write about next?

Science fiction is turning into science fact at ever-increasing speeds, so I really hope some of the scientific breakthroughs that are on the horizon can be used to build a better world for all of us. And in terms of my new project, I'm afraid I'll have to keep that one under my hat for a moment as I don't want to give away any spoilers, but keep your eyes peeled for a spooky new series called Fear Files that is coming in the autumn.

10. When you need some downtime to escape your notebook, where do you go and what kinds of things do you enjoy doing?

I love walking, exploring new places. browsing in bookshops, listening to music and spending time with my family.

Creative Challenge: How would you encourage young writers to get started on writing a story where they find themselves in a video game?

I'd like you to write your an opening chapter where you put yourself inside your favourite videogame. What's the goal of the game? What dangers would you face? Think about the details you choose and the impression these give, combining action and description to bring the world of the game to life in your reader's mind. Try to end your chapter on a cliffhanger to leave readers wanting more!

School Visits: Do you offer school events? What is included in your visits, and how can schools get in touch to organise an event with you?

From interactive Escape Room events to creative writing workshops, one of my favourite parts of my job is meeting young readers when I visit schools,and you can find out more about the events I offer at my website - and visits can be organised through the agency Authors Aloud.

Dip into Christopher Edge's first Escape Room (Nosy Crow, 2022)

Christopher Edge's Escape Room explores some serious questions about how children can help shape the future of the world while taking the reader on an incredible 'escape room' adventure that keeps you guessing around every twist and corner.

Here, Christopher Edge tells us more about Escape Room, reads from the book and discusses some of the themes he covers in this book and his earlier titles:

About Author

Interview

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