This Is How Mark Duncan, From Winston-Salem NC, Modified The Game For High Schoolers:
I ran Escape Room Z a couple of weekends ago with middle school/high school students and adult leaders. Our crew had about 32 people, so four teams of 6-7 and everyone finished within 90 mins, with the fastest team being 70 mins.
We mostly used the 4x6 picture puzzles and added a couple of real props of our own. Overall the game was enjoyed by all, kids really liked the challenge. I had to give a lot of hints, as the game was quite hard, but tried to let them push through it for a while before dropping any clues.
One puzzle I added at the beginning was to order
a case like this for each group. In it, I put their puzzle picture cards, a pair of scissors, and tape in each box. I set the combination to 894. I also had placed a mirror in the room in which had the word HID written in red fingerpaint (to look like a bloody message) and like a finger smear beside the D like the person was actually trying to write the word HIDE. The letters HID are a standard A1 Cipher.
Upon starting the game I gave each group their box and immediately they had to figure out how to open it. I did give them the clue that upon waking up in the apartment they found a note scrawled on a piece of paper that read
Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
A is 1 and B is 2. I did not draw their attention to the mirror. This first puzzle took about 10 minutes before groups started figuring out that HID was the combination. This was a fun little starting puzzle to get to the real puzzles.
The case add-on was a lot of fun and was interesting to see which groups made opening their cases the priority as opposed to some groups who initially spent a lot of time inspecting the other items in the room. You could use really any three digit word on the mirror, at first I was going to use
DIE with combo
485, but I thought
HID was more curious and drew more attention that it might be more significant than just a message. Writing on the mirror just made sense since they needed it to view the backwards blood message too, and it was just a good creepy decoration.
I also thought handing each group a mysterious case was a lot more exciting than just the stack of photos alone. Spotify playlists were good too!
Additionally, we used a metal box and a combo lock which I put the nerf guns in, that definitely made it more exciting too. I believe you had made that suggestion on something I had read and it really made it more exciting to have hands on it.
What made me laugh was the phrase
Obey Your Hunger has come to be an inside joke for the students who went on the retreat, they think that is hilarious.
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