About us

“Old married couple” is probably the best description of us. Our first grey hairs arrived around the same time as we started making online escape rooms and other online puzzles.

In the Before Times, we were just two ordinary IT workers - working with code and teams of programmers. Then the pandemic arrived and we started playing a lot of games at home. Online escape room games caught our attention and, as any “creator at heart” will understand, we eventually said to ourselves:

“We could do that too”.

We were working freelance and could adjust our hours - and in time the games just took over from the “serious” work we did for others. (We still work freelance now and then to keep the lights on, learn new things and socialize, but most of our time goes into building games.)

Teamwork

The games are a joint effort. We write the story together - preferably in a hot tub or while looking out over the sea. Poul’s strengths are in programming and 3D modeling, while Therese focuses on designing the experience and sharpening the puzzles. We’re heavily inspired by real-life escape rooms. Even though our games are digital, we want each one to feel like something that could be built in the real world. That’s what we love playing - so that’s what we create.

Tested on Friends. Occasionally on Siblings.

It takes a lot to make games with just two people, but we are lucky enough to get a lot of help in the testing and feedback from friends, family and kind strangers. We are really grateful for every piece of feedback that lets us improve the games. We can look back on many funny incidents - like the first time we tested Pirate Pursuit on Therese’s brother and the bread started flying. (We didn’t even know that was possible.)

Play Together

We’re really focused on collaboration. The games aren’t a race to the finish. Yes, you will get a certificate of completion, but we think the most important thing is that you had fun along the way. That’s why we don’t show a timer during the game. No pressure 😌

You can play all our games on your own, but we really hope you’ll play them with someone - colleagues/friends/your partner/a parent.

Sometimes we get lost in the details. In our free game JP Hansen we recreated a real-life cash register from 1896 (a family heirloom). Every detail was hand-drawn by Therese (with 3D markers) and turned into the game version cash register by Poul using Blender. It took forever. And we’d absolutely do it again.

It has been quite the journey. We started in 2022 and released our first two games (a short free one and Pirate Pursuit) in November 2023. In 2024, we rewrote much of the game core while building Mission Possible, our Christmas game. The rewrite aimed to support more platforms - including newer tablets - and fix some tricky bugs we’d run into. In 2025, we made sure those changes benefited all the games and did some rethinking around in-game navigation. Next up: a new game that begins with a hot air balloon adventure.

As programmers, we’re not exactly marketing experts. We rely on word of mouth and making free short puzzles to promote our free game. Our hope is that once players enjoy those, they’ll want to play one of the paid ones too. Marketing professionals might roll their eyes at us about all the free stuff, we know. But for us, it is all about finding the right people who truly enjoy our games.

The free puzzles - and especially the jigsaw puzzles - have been really popular. We are still exploring how we can use that interest to keep the lights on and free up more time to create even more puzzles. We’d love to hear from you about potential collaborations or funding. One of our dreams is to help museums share their collections with more people - whether through jigsaw puzzles or online escape rooms set inside the museum.

If we could get funding, we’d love to make an online escape room in collaboration with our local museum here in Uldum (Denmark), which is housed in an old mill from 1895. Or the LEGO museum in Billund or…

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have something to share. We love hearing from people and getting feedback.
Use the email info@zebraescapes.com