What Is A Kid-Friendly Escape Room And Why Should You Build One?

Looking for a great way to entertain kids? Something that'll be memorable for you and a blast for them? Well, forget about those boring old party games - bobbing for apples is out (the dentist wouldn't approve anyway), and pin the tail on the donkey probably wasn't safe anyway...

It's time to make an escape room! (Here's how)

Escape rooms are great for a diverse range of events. Birthday parties, family gatherings, and nights out with friends all improve by adding an escape room to the mix. You can find devilishly difficult escape rooms, scary escape rooms, or gentler escape rooms suitable for a younger crowd.

Escape rooms provide great entertainment for kids of all ages. They're an immersive, cinematic experience where players will work together to solve puzzles - often resulting in them 'escaping a room'. The adrenaline flows as players race against the clock, desperately trying to escape a fate worse than death! Using wit and intelligence, players solve puzzles and ciphers to progress through the room to win.

Escape rooms usually conjure images of commercial venues with elaborate themes and special effects. They have fog rolling in and eerie sounds on hidden speakers. Often, these escape “rooms” contain multiple rooms. Sometimes, you progress through the rooms in linear fashion, never returning to a prior room. Other times, you must move back and forth between rooms to find the clues needed to escape. Sometimes, you wander about the rooms desperately hoping to remember where you mislaid your glasses.

You can make an escape room at home which is just as much fun and much less expensive than commercial rooms. When you design your own escape room you control the theme, the puzzles, and the decorations. Be as fancy as you want (or as fancy as your family will allow). Whether you go bare bones or recreate King Tut’s tomb, you’re sure to wow your friends.

If you don’t want to make your own escape room from scratch, you can download a diy escape room. The theme and the puzzles are set. You simply have to decide how to decorate the room, invite the players, and begin. The best part — downloadable escape rooms provide virtual gamemasters! You can set up the game spoiler free and still play!

There are several tricks to making a kid-friendly escape room. You need to consider your players. What do they like? Are they second graders or high schoolers? Are they high-schoolers that act like second graders? The items below will help make your escape room a hit with the kids.

Choose an exciting theme. The sky’s the limit. Choose sci fi, action/adventure, mystery or any other genre your players love. Base the room on The Hobbit and make everyone play in period costumes! Or base it on the latest Marvel movie. To escape, the kids must free the super-hero so that they can fight the villain (in this case, the person who made the cake with too little icing!).

The theme helps immerse the players into the game. Coming up with a theme they’ll love will have them diving off the high dive right into the game. Remember, they encounter the theme first. It sells them on the game.

Use simple puzzles. Some escape games have complex ciphers, rotating rooms and secret knocks. You don’t need any of these to make an escape room. Fun puzzles that clearly and logically connect to each other will provide all of the suspense and challenge that your players need. (Check out this list for some fun ideas)

By simple we don’t mean easy. “2+2=” or “America’s first president was ____” will not make for fun challenges and probably leave the kids wondering why you question their intelligence (which you do, for many good reasons, but they don’t need to know that). Working for the win is always more fun.

Use tasks in addition to puzzles. Tasks include word searches, mazes, or other common games. Players see the game and know what to do at once. For example, a word search might include the information needed to solve the best puzzle. Or, it might tell them to use the name of the world’s best mom (we hope they get that right)!

Tasks help keep the players from feeling stuck and give them a chance to recharge before heading to the next puzzle. Most kids love games, so including these tasks when you make an escape room will only make it more fun and give them something else to rave about after the game.

Incorporate fun physical challenges. Kids tend to have ants in their pants. Including a few physical challenges allows them to stay in the flow of the game while they keep moving. This also helps refresh their brains and lets them feel as if they are moving closer to escaping.

Examples of fun physical challenges include shooting zombies with nerf guns, building pillow forts, and stepping through playing card minefields. If you’re playing outside you can create an obstacle course or an easter egg hunt. Just make sure that any canine minefields are cleared before the game starts.

Physical challenges make for a fun end to the game. After they’ve sweated through puzzles and conquered a maze, running an obstacle course to escape the ghost of teachers past will send them through the roof! Have fun making an escape room that ends with an epic backyard romp!

Choose an appropriate time limit. When making an escape room for kids, bear in mind that they don’t have the longest attention spans. In fact, they probably would not have made it through that last sentence. In addition to using simple puzzles and tasks, you might want to consider using 30 or 40 minutes as the time limit. This will prevent players from becoming tired and bored. If they get bored, your hard work creating a fully functional Death Star will be for nothing.

Most escape rooms give players an hour to escape. That rule is not set in stone. If you think your guests won’t last the full hour, cut the time to 40 minutes. Make sure they clearly understand the time limit prior to the game. We also recommend having a countdown timer on an iPad or television so that they know at all times how long they have to escape.

If you download a game with an hour time limit it may be possible to shorten the game by simply providing the players with solutions to some of the puzzles. You might want to try the game yourself before you start the kids’ game to ensure that you have it pared down properly.

In addition to having the time of their lives, escape rooms provide kids with tangible benefits (like this awesome educational value). Best of all, the kids will be so focused on the fun, they will not notice the learning.

   • Escape rooms offer engaging content for the entire family. You can make an escape room for all ages!

   • You control the content. You can ensure that the content is age appropriate, preventing kids from being scared or facing puzzles targeted to older players.

   • It’s a new experience. Most kids have yet to experience the joys of escape rooms. It's like a video game without screens!

   • Budget-friendly. Commercial escape rooms cost $30-$50 per person. Making an escape room at home saves serious money. You want the kids to escape, not your hard earned cash.

   • Escape rooms teach critical thinking. Escape rooms often present puzzles in a logical but “slanted” format, forcing the players to use out-of-the-box thinking to solve puzzles.

   • Escape rooms teach teamwork and communication. Kids have to work together or they’ll spend an eternity as zombie fodder. They also have to communicate clearly and efficiently to ensure that information needed to solve puzzles reaches the right team member.

   • Sparks creativity. Kids leave the screen and engage their brains in new ways as they try to solve puzzles. It encourages creating solutions instead of passively consuming content.

   • Escape rooms teach problem-solving skills. Kids learn to think through problems in a logical format. They also learn from their mistakes.

   • Escape rooms teach patience. Logic puzzles force them to move step-by-step to find the problem. Rushing through the problem will result in mistakes, wrong answers, and require them to rework the problem.

   • Perfect for kids events. Escape rooms are easy to make, great fun for the kids, and simple to clean up. What can be better than that?

Making an escape room for kids is simple. Easy. You’ve got this. But, just in case you’re still nervous, we have a few tips for you.

   • Create a theme, and a simple story. What’s their objective? What happens if they fail to escape? Will they spend an eternity doing math worksheets or cleaning gum from the bottom of desks?

   • What wonderful things inhabit this fictional world of yours? Imagining what the kids would find if the escape room you made were real will help you to create puzzles and props to decorate the room.

   • Create puzzles matching your theme. Remember to make them age appropriate. Asking them to fill out your tax returns to escape from the ghost is probably more than they can handle.

   • Make sure that the puzzles connect to your theme and to each other. Connecting the puzzles to the theme and to each other will help the kids move forward in a logical way. It focuses their brains and immerses them in the world that you created. (We've got some more advanced tips for you here).

   • Decorate. How much or how little you decorate is up to you. Your new world can exist in reality or only in their minds. Either way, they will have a blast!

Making an escape room is the hard part, once you've done that you get to sit back and enjoy the smiles on their faces.

Trust me, when your escape room party becomes a beloved childhood memory all the effort will be worth it.

Is there anything else you need to make your kids event a hit? Just shoot me a message and let me know. I'd love to help make your event truly magical!

Enjoy your adventures!