Thoughts Designing an Escape Game

Recently, I had the opportunity to help design an escape room game, this was a really neat experience after playing in so many. Our focus here was on strong communication between split groups and emphasizing practical security skills.  I'm going to highlight some of my favorite challenges and influences, as these are elements I've wanted to see in escape games for awhile and thought were successful here. For starters, players were split into two groups and had to figure out how to contact the other group. Once connected via chat, they had to verbosely communicate as clues in each room were relevant to the opposite team's room! With the main focus being communication, almost all of the clues and keys emphasized teamwork and descriptive language. Some of my favorite 'puzzles' were lock picking challenges throughout both rooms. These were see-through training locks on lockboxes, with a decent set of lock picks provided. Each team made it through these surprisingly fast, which was awesome to see. We also had computers that had to be "hacked" with passwords hidden in the rooms. They had files and documents with various clues. It would be fun to take these computer challenges further with IoT or embedded systems control, especially with a more technically focused group. Ultimately, it was rewarding to see participants thrive with challenges that were designed to focus on their skill set. All in all, this was an eye opening experience. I think in future designs I may include more challenges with a non-linear progressions, such as locking picking challenges that can consume one or two people and be solved in any amount of time throughout the game.