A fun experience at home with your friends – Escape Rooms in a box
Escape rooms are the current rage and my friends and I really enjoy them.
What’s an escape room?
An escape room is a physical room that is generally hosted by one person (who helps you when you get stuck and makes sure things don’t malfunction leading you to not escape when you should have).
When you enter the room, there will be hints as to how to solve puzzles and as you solve some of them, you’ll find other clues to other puzzles. For example, a map on the wall might lead you to inspect VHS boxes, then in one of the boxes you find a code that opens a locked box. That box has a UV light in it which lets you read a word written in UV visible ink on the map that tells you the code to another box, etc…… Usually, you have one hour to figure out how to open all the boxes and find all the clues, that let you open the door to escape.
Sometimes an additional complication is thrown in. In two escape rooms I’ve done, there is a zombie who, if they touch you, “kiills you” so you are out of the game. This can make for a more stressful experience. Other games may have time-outs if you try the wrong thing, making you wait to try again. Everything you need is in the room, but can you figure it out in time?
The cost can get pretty expensive though with each person generally having to pay between $15 and $40 to participate. While they are fun, doing them can get expensive.
Similar experience, but cheaper
One thing that can help people in locations that don’t have escape rooms (although that is getting to be a smaller and smaller portion of the world), or who have already done the ones in the area and want more, or just don’t want to pay that much, is the new collection of escape rooms in a box. Here are a few examples of these that are currently available. Some are good for kids, some for teens and up, and there are a lot of different themes available, so you can pick what theme your group would like most.
Great for your next party, where you just don’t know what to do, and they generally are between $10 and $40 (for the whole group) so very cost-effective. And some can even be re-used, just pass them on to another person who likes these types of games.
You can do in-person escape rooms all around the world. Here are just a few examples:
