Make Your Own Escape Room Blueprint

The theme, game length, and puzzle complexity all depend upon the answer to this question.

For example, your 8-year-old 'My Little Pony' fan and her friends would feel more at home in an enchanted winter wonderland than a suave 1920s-themed mystery. Add puzzles that require advanced logic skills and your little players have already checked out!

So, start with your target audience and work from there.

Our Example:

For our game, we're going to be making a DIY escape room for a 12-year-old kids birthday party. Her name is Eva and she loves playing escape room games on her tablet. She's also annoyed she never gets to play with her parents. Until now...

It will involve 1 adult to introduce the game and answer hints.

Having a goal, and knowing something dire is in store if that goal is not reached, adds urgency and an extra level of fun to your adventure.

So, you already decided on a theme. What is your player's goal?

"Thwart creepy, evil Sherlock's plan to assassinate the chief of police"? Awesome.

"Help the Wolfpack work out what really happened in Vegas"? Classy.

"Explore the Winter Faire before your magical whisp-friend loses it's memories, forever"? Magical.

"Find a dangerous artifact and return it to its proper place in the warehouse"? Epic.

"Solve a murder before your party runs out of drinks"? Can't beat a classic!

"Save the cheerleader, save the world?" Obscure already?

"Escape from your mom's place"? Ummm … maybe pass on that one …

Although we might refer to your game as an “escape room” or an “escape game,” feel free to move away from the traditional “Escape from Cell Block Z” storyline.

Your players don’t necessarily have to escape from anything; as long as they have a goal and a reason they need to complete it within a given time frame, you’re all set!

Things like breaking into a bank vault, hacking the FBI database, curing a zombie virus, or navigating a psychological journey through depression (how deep do you want to go?), are fair game.

Our Example

Since tombs are everywhere in Egypt, we're going to have Eva and her friends get stuck in a long-forgotten tomb.

Their goal will be to get out!

We're ready to pull our story plan together.

Exciting!

Combine all your answers into a short story. Include, and highlight, the objects from your list as these will become puzzles very soon.

Don't worry about making it perfect as this is just the plan to help you make the game. The final story you tell players will be much shorter and not give away what's going on!

Our Example

You're walking beside the River Nile when you feel the ground shift, and you tumble down a stony shaft into a long-abandoned tomb. You must now find your way out before the tomb becomes your own.

Everything around you is ancient, dusty, and silent. You realize that no other human has set foot in here for centuries. Mysterious paintings decorate the stone walls, and priceless artifacts are stacked against the walls.

Tomb Opening

The chamber you've landed in is too deep for you to climb out, and a large stone door adorned with hieroglyphic writing appears to be the only exit. There's a large rock, similar to the Rosetta stone you saw on YouTube, as well as a pile of old stones that appear to fit together somehow.

Since you can't get out the way you came in, you must figure out how to open the stone door.

Sarcophagus room

Once you make it through the stone door, you find yourself in a chamber with a large sarcophagus in its center and no apparent way out, aside from the door you just came through. Canopic jars full of guts sit nearby. In order to get past the sarcophagus, you must weigh the mummy's heart against the feather of truth.

If the heart weighs the same, a secret door appears behind the sarcophagus. You crawl through it and find yourself in a third chamber that leads into a maze.

Maze

In order to find your way out of the tomb, you must navigate through the maze by reconstructing the original engineer's plans.

Once you make it through the maze, you discover a tunnel that leads to the surface and you escape to your freedom!

Time to get your hands dirty.

Like, real dirty!

Because thinking about making up puzzles is a lot easier than actually doing it. However, the story plan you've written will save you hours of time and days of frustration.

The thing to keep in mind is that you're creating this game for folks you know. It doesn't have to be perfect … it just needs to be fun. So don't go overboard trying to devise the challenge of the century.

As I was writing the narrative for The Lost Mummy, I was already imagining some of the puzzle possibilities.

Challenge 1: Figure out how to open the stone door

For this puzzle, I decided to give players a set of "stones" that needed to be arranged in the correct order to find a numeric code.

Once players found the numeric code, they'd receive a cipher puzzle using hieroglyphics. The solution to this earned them the next set of cards.

Challenge 2: Weigh the mummy's heart against the feather of truth

For the second challenge, players had to determine which organs were stored in which jars, then solve a simple riddle to place the jars in the correct order (from left to right).

Once this was complete, the weight of the heart could be calculated and compared to the weight of the feather. If they matched, they received the final set of cards.

Challenge 3: Navigate through the maze by reconstructing the original engineer's plans

Here, players had to use clues to determine where certain landmarks would be found within the maze, then use their cipher-decoding skills to find the correct path to the end.

First, I realized that The Lost Mummy players aren't psychic. They're 12, so they will need a set of clues. I created a simple clue-delivery method in the form of an explorer's journal, filled with scribbled notes that would come in handy during the game.

Now that you've decided how you'll present your puzzles, make a list of the items you'll need to completely create each one. (Note this is a list of items that you need. If your list includes an enchanted sword and a warp-drive, you're probably doing something wrong... or very, very right!)

This is easy for the physical challenges. If you need balloons or string or hoola-hoops or bean bags, write it all down.

If you need a series of signs, write down what you need and what they'll say.

Of course, you'll need drinks and snacks if you're going to host a fashionably high-brow house party.

If your players will need a cipher key, write down whether it's going to be in a conveniently placed book or hidden in the image on one of your game cards or spelled out in refrigerator alphabet magnets.

Also, if you plan to use a cipher, you'll need to write down your original message and then write it out as it will look in the cipher. For now, it's enough to just have these things figured out. When you get to Step 3, you can make them look all cool and stuff.

For example, if one of your puzzles is a cipher written in Morse code, write out the actual message as it will appear. Then, since few people know Morse code these days, you'll also need to determine how to provide a lookup chart somewhere, either in your game cards or in the room where you'll be playing the game.

I prefer using PowerPoint because:

• My handwriting's terrible.
• I can download pictures from the internet and paste them onto the slides instead of drawing my own or physically gluing images to index cards.
• The slides have a polished, professional look when I print them.

Having said that, as long as each puzzle's entirely solvable, it doesn't matter how your game is made. So if inkwell and goose feather is your thing, go nuts!

The Lost Mummy game has 18 cards.

• • 1. Title page

• • 2. Story intro

• • 3-6. Journal pages (to provide clues)

• • 7. Door puzzle

• • 8. Rosetta Stone

• • 9. Cipher puzzle

• • 10. Story transition from first chamber to second chamber

• • 11-12. Canopic jar and weight-of-the-heart puzzles

• • 13. Story transition from second chamber to third chamber

• • 14-17. 3-dimensional pieces and map for final maze puzzle

• • 18. Final story card heralding escape

At this point, you've already done all the hard work. This step is just taking all the ideas and sketches and puzzle designs and turning them into a playable game.

You can draw on index cards.

You can glue pictures you printed or found in magazines to index cards.

Or you can use the PowerPoint template I've provided. This gives you a lot of extra design options since you can find images online that match what you want, use fancy fonts to write your instructions, and even print the whole thing on thick cardstock at an office store if you want it to look super polished and professional.

It's just a matter of adding spit, shine, and a little magic!

The example storyline, puzzles, and photos in this guide are from The Lost Mummy, a kid's escape room kit I co-designed.

Although it was a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun.

You can download the final game here. It's a great activity for birthday parties, Ancient-Egypt units in school, youth groups, and more!

If your crew's up for it, breaking out the costumes is one surefire way to heighten the fun and boost the imagination!

• • Sherlock theme? Grab an overcoat and scarf.

• • Frozen? Glam up your princesses (or use the printable dress-props that come with Frost)

• • Escaping from Cell Block 52? Rock up in your pyjamas.

• • Wizarding school? Break out your finest dress robes.

• • Zombie theme? Um ... tomato sauce?

• • Partying like Gatsby? Grab a fancy shirt and some cut-out moustaches - just like this suave date night!

Buy some cheap DIY props that get the atmosphere cranking.

• • Candles or battery powered lanterns take your crew back to the past.

• • Glow sticks add a futuristic or post-apocalyptic dynamic.

• • Bring in a few branches from your garden to teleport your group back to the time of the Incas.

• • Cardboard boxes can easily become the walls for an ancient Egyptian tomb.

For at least one of your friends this will be as much fun as the entire rest of the escape room. No joke, prepare to facepalm when they've said 'just one more photo' for the 7th time...

We've bundled extra photobooth props in both our Frost Escape kit and Envy Escape kit. And they're a riot of fun! Depending on your theme you can either make these by hand, and stick them onto sticks for awesome posing, or jump on Etsy to look for a kit that matches your tastes.

Pro tip: this is a great way to have fun with your crew while waiting for everyone to arrive. As each person drips in, get them to peruse the photo booth offerings and tape the props to their costume for the night.

You can even go all out and ask each player to role-play a character complete with accent and ridiculous personality. This ups the laugher count on the night to no end!

The only issue with doing an escape room at home is that your TV and couch combo aren't exactly Sherlock themed ...

Here's where background music totally crushes it!

There are a bunch of free soundtracks on this background music site.

You can also search YouTube for "[theme] background music," and you may find exactly what you're looking for.

For example, typing in "zombie background music" takes you to this page, which features a number of different options of different lengths.

Finally, you can search for music genres (like jazz or swing) on Spotify and make your own playlist or use a pre-made one. Start it up as your guests arrive to set the mood.

If you're a foodie (or you just want an excuse to use blue food coloring in something), make the evening an escape dinner party and theme up the menu.

Breaking out of the slam? Pass around cheap white bread and water instead of hors d'oeuvres.

Stealing a senator's little black book at a gala fundraiser? Fancy canapes on silver trays are just the ticket.

Trying to find a cure before zombies break through? Might be a good time to pass around some green and red jello.

Wizard school hijinx? Bring on the Butterbeer!

You did it!

You designed a DIY escape room adventure kit!

I told you it wasn't easy, and you just jumped in and crushed it anyway! Legend!

So, obviously "play your game" wasn't one of the three steps to designing your game, but now that your game is finished, it shouldn't just live on your hard drive or in a drawer somewhere!

You've worked hard on this. Go ahead and show it off!

Invite your friends and family over.

Play it in your classroom or at work!

Finally, if you're planning an epic escape party, consider going all out with these bonus tips.