Play escape games with hints

Be a contributor to a puzzle and not a spectator. A key is almost never used more than once. Leave it in the lock for your sanity! This will help prevent the key from being used again, prevent someone else from trying out another key on the lock, and prevent you from accidentally locking the object again. In very rare cases, a key may be used more than once, so keep that in mind too as a last resort option. This helps prevent team members from examining the same object again and again.

This helps keep the room tidy, so you can find what you need. This also lets you keep together related objects, so you can find all of them right when you need them. Some examples:. Be extremely thorough when looking and touching everywhere, as if you were painting the room rather than as if you were just looking for where you put your phone.

Sometimes key objects can be in the most exotic or non-exotic of places, like:. At the very beginning of each game, split the room into sections and assign different people to comb through each section, looking for objects of importance. This helps make sure that the room is thoroughly inspected, and helps prevent the case where certain areas are overlooked and certain other areas are repetitively combed over.

Listen to the intro and rules by your game master — your game master might slip some helpful hints at the beginning that will save you a lot of time. This applies to the hints that they give in-game too, especially if they are live action actors.

All of the staff in-game will try to nudge you in the right direction. You may have to wave into a camera, use a walkie-talkie, or pay attention to the in-game actor.

Regardless of how hints are distributed, we recommend asking for hints whenever you feel overly stuck or have stopped having fun. Game masters are trained to push you in the right direction so you can start solving puzzles again. This is best gathered through experience, but here are some common things that new escape room players discover that are almost never important to the escape room.

This tip is combined well with the the next tip — if you have 3 out of 4 of the numbers on a combination lock, immediately input in the 3 digits and cycle through the last one. Usually you can ask a game master about the puzzle you skipped afterwards. Breaking things is both bad for the escape games and the players — for everything including game functionality, player safety, and important game sequences. Avoid climbing on furniture, or touching the ceiling.

Escape rooms are a lot more fun when played sober. Come in with a sober mind ready for some puzzle-solving, quick decision-making, and effective communication! Celebrate afterwards instead of before! Have at least one member of your team keep track of the larger picture, which involves figuring out what smaller puzzles need to be done, what final objects need to be collected, or what final objective needs to be done.

This sometimes allows you to just skip over the smaller steps. Go for the simpler solution. A watch will let you keep an eye out for exactly how much time is left, which is very helpful when the game does not provide a clock, or only provides a clock in one of the rooms.

A watch with a glow function can even provide a handy light to shine on a dimly-lit lock. These games can be hard, but are also simultaneously fun and immensely satisfying. Enjoy yourselves, and embrace the game and your friends, not the outcome, and you will have lots of fun! Liked this post? Follow us on Facebook , Instagram , or Twitter to get notified when we post more escape room articles!

You can also subscribe to our blog in the sidebar. Just did my first escape room. I might add beware red herrings. In the escape room I did there were at least 3 padlocked drawers that we never had to open and wasted time on trying to open; and clue cards that never resulted in any forward progress. It was our first time and the ages ranged from 17 to But that IS a good idea. We thought a key might open more then just one lock though.

There were 10 of us and we figured it all out with 3 minutes to spare. There was also a cool surprise having to do with the cannon that wowed us and gave us another key or map. This strategy backfired recently when one key opened two locks. Hubby and myself are doing the Mystery Mansion at Breakout Montgomery tonight.

We have never played any Escape Rooms. Theses tips are extremely helpful, so thank you for them. I tried an escape room for the first time tonight, and it could have gone better. The idea of our room Curse of the Evil Genie was fun, but unfortunately the execution was shoddy, and this is more for game designers:. We tried the solution we received at least fifteen times and it just.

So unfortunately we ran out of time. Our game master, however, opened the lock just fine…and the third number in the combo was NOT the third number we got in our solution. So it was either the solution was wrong, or the lock is so degraded from use that the chambers are starting to falter.

Our game master kept pointing out something on the wall, and all along was using the wrong color to refer to a puzzle needed to advance to the next part of the room.

We eventually figured it out, but that was 10 minutes wasted on a bad hint that the game master kept repeating to us. It really puts you at the end of your seat. Tip 1 and 2 and Just had my first experience with 6 friends and 3 strangers. The strangers had completed 5 games that day — they were on a serious quest and excluded the rest of us. We had to be quite assertive even aggressive to get in on figuring out puzzles.

One of the players grabbed a clue out of my hand, another walked around with 2 clues until one of my friends took one from her. Sure, we all wanted to win and escape — but we also want to have fun. After 5 games they knew more than we did about finding clues and figuring it out — but they could have also been more generous and instruct us to do something — or include us in some way.

They barely spoke to us. They called instructions out to each other. We said give it to our friend, as he took a locksmith course. Unfortunately — we had already gone over the hour — they gave us more time because we were so close. It took us 2mins longer to finish.

Had he given up the key to our friend we would have made it within the time allowed. There might always be a mixed group of experience vs first time players. Make friends before you go in and make a plan on how to manage it so that everyone has a chance to play — Tip When human beings are put under a time pressure, their ability to view the larger picture, can become blocked by tunnel vision.

The larger picture is: this is a chance for my family to create a wonderful memory together, a chance for me to be surprised by seeing new qualities in my family members and friends, etc. Abandoned Flash. The Submarine WebGL. Dead Strike Unity 3D. Escape or Die WebGL.

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