Create An Epic Escape Room At Home
5 min read
We all need to escape the ordinary from time to time, but when going out isn’t a viable option, spend some quality time at home with family and friends and set up your own escape room. It’s deceptively easy with Epic Escape’s Escape Room In A Box (3 Game Bundle)
I received an Escape Room Box in exchange for our honest opinions.
My children have been interested in escape rooms since they saw the folks at BBC in a fun skit. My son even tried to make one for his sister, the sweet boy that he is. But now, I can set up and host an escape room right here at home for the whole family with the items in this box-all the hard work is already planned out. Thank you to Epic Escapes for providing us with a box to try out in exchange for our honest opinions.
What is an Escape Room?
An escape room is an immersive game of cooperation (and sometimes competition) to find and solve clues that will allow you to escape a ‘locked’ room. Each escape room game has a different theme.
What’s in the Escape Room Box?
Everything you need to set up 3 escape rooms are included. The box is carefully packed and opening it feels like an experience in itself with the tissue paper, the leaflets, the 4 closed packets, and the hardware, too.
Here’s the breakdown of the main items that are used for every escape room:
- 1 hefty door ‘lock’
- 2 wooden boxes with combo locks
- notepad/pencil/pencil sharpener
- uv marker and black light
- Safe hidden in a book
- All additional items required for each of the 3 included games
Three escape room games included:
- Hijack Escape Room (easy)
- Piracy Escape Room (medium)
- Crime Escape Room (difficult)
I like that there are different levels of play in this box so you can start with the easy room and then work your way up and as you become used to finding clues and deciphering them as well as understanding how they work together.
How These Escape Rooms Worked
You are a locked room and you have to find your way out. There is a ‘lock’ on the door and you need to discover the combination of it through searching the room, finding clues and putting them together.
You may need to use math, geography, general knowledge, pilot and travel skills. For example, how to read flight maps, meal menus, and things such as that.
When you find the clues, you work together as a team and see how the clues fit together. Which ones go together and which ones don’t. Take the knowledge from each of these items and combine your general knowledge together.
When you come up with a clue, you then need to decipher the code that is used for it. The final set of clues will lead you to a number which will unlock the two wooden boxes. Inside these boxes will be additional clues. This final clue, when solved, will allow you to unlock the combination padlock on the door.
How We Played
One bleary day I decided we all needed a break and some fun. I banished everyone to a bedroom and shut them in while I spent a little time setting things up – everything you need to do as the host is clearly laid out for you.
I hid the objects around the living room and set the lock boxes to their designated combinations and stashed them around the room, too.
When I invited everyone in, I told them the rules, set a timer for 60 minutes, and sat back to watch them hunt around the room and try to put all of the pieces of information together. In our case, we did go over the 60 minutes, but we simply continued to play and have fun together.
Newspaper pieces, flight plans, menus, and many more items were gathered up and cross-referenced to find themes, hints, and hidden messages.
What happens when you’re stuck? The players can ask the host for a hint. The hint cards are provided, which makes it easy. As time went on, fewer hints were needed by my family as their brains became used to the way everything worked.
Who Can Play?
Kallista was 11 when we did our first escape and she was on the young side and became a little frustrated at times. She did improve as she became used to some of the bits and pieces. For this reason, I would say that it may be a better fit for slightly older teens and adults.
This is a great game for using logic and thinking through processes and seeing how different clues and activities come together. The level that you choose for the escape room could depend upon age, abilities, or the ease of logic that people apply in everyday situations (I won’t name any names – they know who they are).
What We Liked
I liked that we were all working together and everybody was able to use their own abilities and put them together to come up with the solutions in the end.
Now that we have tried out epic escapes, I look forward to see more of what they have. It really is a fun game and something that I think can easily be worked into family life, group events such as home ed meet-ups for teens, parties, and other celebrations.
There are additional kits that you can purchase as add-ons – both physical and downloadable. Once you have the basic kit you can continue your great escape fun.
Our Verdict
I think we all really enjoyed our escape. We played on a random Saturday afternoon, which was a fun way to spend some quality time together as a family. It was a good way for us to spend time together and be away from the screens and the pressures of home school and work and or the other things that life throws at us. I really liked that it was all set up in the instructions were clearly laid out in a book so that made things much easier because I haven’t actually been to an escape room.
Epic Escapes would be so much fun for birthdays, office parties (a sneaky way for team building), or teen homeschool groups. Imagine having an escape room on New Year’s Eve with the timer counting down to midnight!
More About Epic Escapes
Epic Escapes offers a 100-day Satisfaction Guarantee, so you really cannot go wrong! And if you enjoy good brain teasers, sign up and receive a new one each week – my kids love me reading them out.
Now available: Printable escape rooms with no set-up required!
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