The storyline is one of the most important parts of any escape room experience! Epic Escapes provides 3 engrossing and engaging storylines to get you started but there’s nothing to say you can’t invent your own. The beauty of being in your own home means you’re not really limited to one storyline or escape room narrative. You can go all-out with extra characters, side plots involving family members and even dress up or role play. My first escape game was a real blast. It took me almost a month of thinking, searching, creating, buying some stuff, and setting all of it up in my living room, but when it came down to the actual playing, I felt like the Superman of the Game Masters. Actually, it was a surprise party for my escape room crew, and btw, I’ve played many escape games with them. In my case, the storyline was finding the hidden treasure in the mysterious castle of Milan, but you can come up with a bunch of different themes. For example, if your gift is a Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle Game board game, your theme can be the storyline of the game. If you bought a new pair of Jordans for your kid, the theme can be the Space Jam movie and so on… Just think of something that your kids, family, or friends are going to love, and make a great short story out of it. As with the setting, the plot must be delivered to your players. Printable escape rooms for home printing, such as Houdini’s Secret Room or The Gilded Carcanet, almost always deliver the plot as a written introduction to the players. This can be done in the form of a letter. In the plot example above this could be a letter from the intelligence agency that gives you the document retrieval mission. Of course, the easiest way is to let someone else do the work and provide you with exciting high-grade puzzles. That’s why we’re here!

Most designers make the rooms very difficult. As a result, you aren’t actually supposed to get out. If groups have a 60-minute time limit, and most teams get out 30 minutes, the concept wouldn’t work. As a result, designers often make them almost impossible to conquer within the time limit. Most teams feel like they failed when the event ends. (Not great for team building.) • We Aren’t Sure How Close We Are to Finishing. Ok, you already have the story, but how can you create puzzles when you have zero experience? Well, it is challenging and time-consuming, but for me, it was the most fun part of the process. Believe me, there is a ton, a million ways to invent puzzles, some of them you can conjure up just by using things you already have in your drawers. Like I mentioned before, use your creativity and you’ll come up with a wonderful storyline, no doubt about it. This escape room is perfect for the whole family to play. Players can let their imagination take hold as they embark on an exciting adventure together, all from the comfort of their own home. Under no circumstances would I suggest that you buy the “Werewolf Experiment”. Again DO NOT buy The Werewolf Experiment. Out of all of the boxes and kits that we tried, this was, by far, the absolute worst. Half-way through, my team was so frustrated that we just stopped to look at the answers. Even looking at the answers, some of the challenges didn’t make a lot of sense. Even with a fairly challenging activity, when the answer to a challenge is figured out, the automatic response should be, “Oh yeah, that makes total sense.” With this game, though, we were like, “What? I wouldn’t have ever figured that out in a million years.”

The plot is the second big decision. Almost all escape rooms have a plot and the challenge of completing the game is explained to the players in the form of a challenge within the plot. The plot is what motivates the players to complete the game and without a plot, an escape room would just be a thematic set of puzzles with to purpose.

This might be as simple as a brightly coloured envelope, or a post-it note. You could include a directional arrow, or the initials of a room, or even the initials of a person. Players will then head to that room or ask that person who will have a scripted line: “I float but you can’t push me underwater, bigger than your head but lighter than a feather.” This points players towards the next clue: balloons. See why in the section below! Photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash Some DIY Puzzle Ideas: Mirror code: You can easily write something on a mirror and it’ll be revealed when someone blows steam onto it. Simply dip your finger in soap and then write your message, then leave a clue: “breathe deep into the mirror and all will be revealed.” E.g. Walking around, your curiosity leads you to a secret room, one in which no one has set foot in over a century.

A Few Reasons Why Most Escape Rooms Stink as “Team Building Events”.

First, making an escape room is a lot of fun. It’s not too different from playing one if you think about it. When you play an escape room you try to piece together the different clues to come up with the answers that the authors decided. When you make an escape room you try to piece together stories and puzzles to create a fun experience for your players. A large volume of the objects within this game had no purpose other than to look thematic. It’s a shame that these components weren’t worked into the gameplay at all. First, you should complete the room yourself. Testing by yourself has some limitations, but if you, the designer, is not able to complete the room even with all your prior knowledge of the puzzles, then no one else will be able to. In this kind of testing, you will be able to find mistakes in your clues and props or mistakes in the overall structure of the game that make it impossible to complete. In this way, lead the tester through all the content in your game, providing hints as needed and disregarding any time limit you might have put on the game. Write down all the hints you needed to give and the total time the tester spent. Setting and plot are two things that go hand in hand and sometimes it is easier to consider them together. For example, if you have an idea for a plot there is often a particular setting that will make that plot shine. And conversely, if you have a setting in mind it will automatically give you ideas for stories that could happen in that setting.