If you’ve ever done an escape room, you know that there should still be some preparation beforehand to make navigating the escape room easier. Doing escape rooms is a great group activity to do with your friends, and it is even more fun when you actually escape the room. Here are some tips and tricks that we’ve compiled to help you navigate your next (or first) escape room.
The first thing that you’ll have to do before going into any escape room is to make a team. The amount of team members required varies on each escape room you do.
Tip #1: Play with friends or coworkers
Experiencing an escape room with your friends and coworkers is going to provide all sorts of advantages. More people means more communication, and that communication is going to be better if it’s with people you know and trust. As a bonus, working with friends or coworkers is a great way to build teamwork and collaboration skills, which will translate well to your job!
Tip #2: Share the work
If you’ve been staring at a clue/puzzle for a while and can’t figure it out, enlist another team member to look it over. A fresh perspective can do wonders. Also, make sure that each puzzle is covered by splitting up the work among your team members, rather than all of you working on the same puzzle each time – this technique saves a lot of time, and gets you working faster under the limit.
Tip #3: Listen to your teammates
The great things about escape rooms is that you can have the ability to try everything. So listen to your teammates and the ideas they suggest. The idea might be a crazy one, but also could be completely logical in the next step to solving the puzzle.
Tip #4: Share what you find…loudly
This can lead to a chaotic atmosphere but it is effective because two team members may have separately found something that relates to the other, and by yelling out what = you find, you can match the two related items together. Some examples of this is a code and a key, a key and a lock etc.
Tip #5: Manage puzzle items
As the puzzles in the escape room progress, you can sometimes find yourself trying to track multiple puzzle items at once, which can get confusing. Here are some tips on managing puzzle items:
- Keep used keys in their lock: keys are almost never used more than once, so no need to collect them as you go, just keep then in the lock to save any confusion later on in the game.
- Make a discard pile: separate the objects you collect in a ‘used’ and ‘unused’ pile. This will save time from examining the same object over and over, and narrow down the list of objects to match to locked puzzles.
Tip #6: Be comprehensive
Escape rooms are full of clues, hints and puzzles. Make sure you find them all by being as comprehensive as possible. Divide your team members and assign them to look through each section of the room to find any clues or objects that will help you solve puzzles and escape.
Follow these tips and you’re guaranteed to have a fun time playing an escape room! The end goal is to escape, but if you don’t that’s okay, just make sure that you had fun doing it. Good luck!