Can you crack the code? In Escape Room Engineering, participants will design, build, and solve their own escape room challenges! Using puzzles, clues, locks, hidden messages, and creative problem-solving, students will work individually and in teams to create exciting mystery adventures. Along the way, they’ll explore basic engineering and design concepts while learning how to develop engaging challenges, test their creations, and think like both puzzle makers and puzzle solvers. Perfect for curious minds who love mysteries, brain teasers, teamwork, and creative challenges!
Escape Room Engineering Packing List
In this program, it will be up to the Instructor(s) to gauge the age, interests and abilities of the group and decide how elaborate their escape room challenges should become. Younger groups may create a series of individual puzzles and challenges connected by a simple story, while older or particularly enthusiastic groups may be ready to create a more elaborate sequence in which solving one puzzle reveals the information needed to tackle the next.
The emphasis should always be on creative problem-solving and the design process, rather than making puzzles impossibly difficult. A great escape room challenge should make the solver think – but should also give them enough information to eventually experience that wonderful “AHA!” moment when everything clicks!
Suggested 10-Week Term Plan
Week 1 — Welcome to the Escape Room!
Introduce the group and talk about escape rooms, mysteries and puzzles.
What makes an escape room fun? What makes a puzzle satisfying to solve? What would make one frustrating?
Set up several simple challenges for participants to solve in teams. These might include:
- a number or letter lock
- a hidden message
- a simple cipher
- a visual puzzle
- a riddle
- a scavenger-style clue
- a puzzle that reveals the location of the next clue
Once they have solved them, talk about the experience from the designer’s perspective. What information did they need? How did they know when they had the right answer? What made them want to keep going?
Week 2 — Codes, Ciphers & Secret Messages
Explore different ways of hiding information.
Try several simple coding techniques such as:
- Caesar/shift ciphers
- symbol substitution
- number-to-letter codes
- Morse code
- backwards or mirror writing
- invisible messages
- messages hidden inside other text or images
Challenge participants to create their own coded messages and trade with another participant or team to solve.
Discuss an important escape-room design principle: a code isn’t much fun if the solver has no reasonable way to figure out how to decode it!
Week 3 — Locks, Keys & Combinations
Explore how locks can become part of a puzzle.
Experiment with available combination locks, keyed locks, lock boxes and other containers.
Instead of simply giving someone a combination, brainstorm ways a puzzle could reveal it.
For example, participants might need to:
- solve three math clues to discover three numbers
- put objects in the correct order
- count particular objects hidden around the room
- solve riddles that correspond with numbers or letters
- assemble pieces that reveal a code
- follow clues to locate a hidden key
Have small groups design and test a simple puzzle → answer → lock challenge.
Week 4 — Engineering the Challenge
This week, move beyond paper puzzles and explore challenges that involve building, manipulating or interacting with something.
Using the available building and craft supplies, challenge participants to experiment with mechanisms such as:
- mazes
- marble runs
- ramps
- pulleys
- simple levers
- magnets
- string or fishing-line mechanisms
- hidden compartments
- boxes-within-boxes
- objects that must be assembled or positioned correctly
The mechanism doesn’t have to be complicated! The goal is to think about how a physical object can become part of solving a mystery.
Allow lots of time for experimenting, failing, rebuilding and trying again.
Week 5 — Hidden in Plain Sight
Explore clever ways escape-room designers hide clues.
Try creating or finding:
- messages hidden inside books or containers
- clues underneath or behind objects
- puzzle pieces hidden around the room
- messages revealed with flashlights or special viewing tools
- clues involving colour, shape or pattern
- objects that look ordinary but contain important information
- scavenger hunts in which one discovery leads to another
Talk about the difference between something being cleverly hidden and simply being impossible to find!
Have participants create mini hidden-clue challenges for one another.
Week 6 — Create the Mystery
It’s time to begin planning the group’s final escape room!
As a group, choose a theme or story.
Possibilities might include:
The Missing Treasure • Secret Laboratory • Spy Mission • Time Traveller • Museum Mystery • Lost in Space • Detective Agency • Wizard’s Workshop • The Missing Scientist
Decide what players are trying to accomplish. Are they escaping somewhere? Finding something? Saving someone? Solving a mystery?
Then begin mapping the experience.
What is the first clue?
What does solving it reveal?
Where does that send the players next?
How will the final puzzle complete the mission?
Divide participants into teams responsible for different puzzles or parts of the experience. Each team should sketch and explain its idea before beginning the final build.
Week 7 — Build the Escape Room
Begin construction!
Teams build their puzzles, props, clues, containers, mechanisms and coded messages.
Encourage participants to keep the player’s experience in mind:
What will the player see? → What should they notice? → What should they figure out? → What happens when they solve it?
Instructors should circulate between groups and help identify problems before teams get too far into construction.
Week 8 — Build, Connect & Test
Continue building and begin connecting the individual challenges into one complete experience.
This is where participants may discover that something that made perfect sense to the designer makes absolutely no sense to somebody else!
Have teams test one another’s puzzles without explaining how they work.
Watch carefully.
Where do testers get stuck?
Do they understand what they’re supposed to do?
Does the puzzle have one clear solution?
Does solving it actually provide the information needed for the next step?
Revise, rebuild and simplify as necessary.
Remind participants: testing and redesigning aren’t signs that the idea failed — they’re part of engineering.
Week 9 — Escape Room Test Run
Set up the complete escape room and run a full playtest.
If possible, divide the group so that some participants act as the escape-room designers/game masters while others attempt the room, then switch.
Designers should resist the urge to immediately explain their puzzles!
Instead, watch where players naturally look, what they try, and where they become confused.
Afterwards, gather feedback and make final changes.
Prepare any signs, instructions, hint cards, reset materials or finishing touches needed for the final week.
Week 10 — The Great Escape!
It’s escape-room day!
Set up the completed experience and allow participants to enjoy the final creation.
Depending on the group and location, teams may:
- attempt one another’s escape rooms
- invite another Explore It! group to try the challenge
- invite teachers or school staff to participate
- divide into designers/game masters and players and then switch
Celebrate not just whether participants escaped, but everything they designed, engineered, tested and improved over the term.
At the end, take apart the room together and make sure participants collect any creations they are taking home.
A Few Escape Room Design Tips
Every puzzle needs a way in.
Players need some clue that tells them what they’re trying to figure out.
Work backwards.
If the answer needs to be 482, first decide how players could reasonably discover 4, 8 and 2.
Don’t confuse difficult with impossible.
The best puzzles make players feel clever when they solve them.
Test everything.
Never assume a puzzle works simply because its creator understands it.
Expect redesigns.
If testers don’t understand a puzzle, that’s useful information!
Hints are part of the game.
Instructors can help participants create hint cards or a hint system so players can keep moving instead of becoming frustrated.
Keep the room safe.
Players should never need to climb furniture, move heavy objects, reach into unsafe spaces, force a lock or container, touch electrical equipment, or dismantle anything belonging to the school. Make it clear before play begins that anything requiring force is not part of the game.
Escape Room Engineering Packing List
Note that a wide variety of building and crafting materials will be packed for this program. Depending on the interests of the participants, additional items may be requested by emailing Liz at any time. Please give at least 1 week notice when requesting supplies.
| QUANTITY | ITEM | |
|---|---|---|
| LOCKS & ESCAPE SUPPLIES | Several | 3-digit combination locks |
| Several | 4-digit combination locks | |
| Several | letter combination locks | |
| Several | keyed padlocks + keys | |
| Several | lockable boxes/containers | |
| Several | small boxes/tins/containers | |
| 1 set | UV/invisible ink pens | |
| Several | small UV flashlights | |
| Several | regular flashlights | |
| Several | small mirrors | |
| 1 set | magnets | |
| PAPER | 1 folder | white paper |
| 1 folder | colourful cardstock | |
| 1 folder | white cardstock | |
| 1 folder | black cardstock | |
| 1 folder | construction paper | |
| 1 folder | large white cardstock | |
| 20+ | cardboard pieces/squares | |
| PENCILS & PENS | 1 bag | pencils |
| 1 bag | pencil crayons | |
| 1 bag | markers | |
| 1 bag | coloured Sharpies | |
| 1 bag | black fine-tip Sharpies | |
| ATTACHMENTS | 4 rolls | Scotch tape |
| 2 rolls | painter’s tape | |
| 2 rolls | masking tape | |
| 2 rolls | duct tape | |
| 1 bag | washi tape | |
| 3 bottles | white glue | |
| 8 | glue sticks | |
| 1 set | glue guns | |
| 1 container | metal brads | |
| BUILDING SUPPLIES | 1 bag | scissors |
| 15 | rulers | |
| 1 set | hole punches | |
| 2 containers | elastic bands | |
| 1 bag | large popsicle sticks | |
| 1 bag | small popsicle sticks | |
| 30–50 | wooden dowels | |
| 1 bag | wooden cubes/blocks | |
| 50 | Dixie cups | |
| 1 bag | straws | |
| 1 bag | pipe cleaners | |
| 1 bag | craft pom-poms | |
| 2 skeins | string/twine | |
| 1 bag | ribbon | |
| 1 container | marbles | |
| Several | cardboard tubes | |
| Various | recycled cardboard/boxes | |
| PUZZLE PROPS | 12+ | dice |
| 1 container | gems | |
| 1 container | gold coins | |
| Various | small toy animals/figures | |
| Several | envelopes | |
| Several | file folders | |
| 1 set | index cards | |
| Various | puzzle pieces/miscellaneous objects | |
| ROOM SET-UP | 2–4 | tablecloths |
| Several | signs/clue holders | |
| 1 roll | painter’s tape for marking boundaries |