Make your own escape box?
Escape boxes are the perfect way to add a surprise activity to any occasion. They are compact, so they can be used anywhere, and can be as simple or as elaborate as you like.
Is it time to make an escape box?
Maybe you've done an escape room and enjoyed it so much that you want to share the experience with people around you. If so, now is the perfect time to create your own escape box. Whether it's an escape box, room or entire escape event, creating an escape experience may sound very complicated. But with us by your side, it doesn't have to be that way at all.
Starting with a good story
A fun experience that you remember, whether it is an escape box or an impressive movie or series, has at its base a good story. This story grabs the player's attention and keeps them motivated. So always start with a good one. Come up with a goal for the players to work toward, a goal to howl for! A yearning desire! For example: winning the lottery, stealing a forbidden item or escaping a murderer.
Once you know what your goal is, you can start thinking about the obstacles the players face in reaching that goal. After all, a story where everything succeeds immediately is not an interesting story. Those obstacles in your story are then the perfect basis for creating your homemade escape box.
Making a good escape box yourself
A good escape box puzzle is logical and fits within the story. A logical puzzle does not mean that it cannot be difficult, but ensures that the steps a player must take can be understood. However, that logic does not always have to be purely in the puzzle, but can also have to do with the dressing and the story. Do you find this puzzle logical?
Creating escape boxes both online and offline
Not only physically are escape puzzles an incredibly fun activity, online ones are also fun and challenging. Perfect when you don't live in the same street, but still want to do something fun together. For the puzzles you can use information to look up, such as coordinates on Google Maps that you have to use to solve a math problem. Take mostly obvious websites, information and videos and make a puzzle by connecting them in a fun way.
Testing your created escape box in the office or classroom
You created your first escape box, congratulations! Probably now you can't wait to let your friends or colleagues play it. Still, it's smart to do a little testing first. Since you created the puzzles yourself, it is likely that you find the steps a player has to go through very logical. As a result, you sometimes overlook small ambiguities, which of course you want to get out.
Even better than testing only at the end, is to already test them while creating your puzzles. So you don't have to have finished your entire escape game at all, or already made your final beautiful version to test. In fact, it is better to start as early as possible to ensure that when you finally finish your homemade escape box, you can be sure that it will work.
Making working prototype of your homemade escape box
So for a test, you need a prototype of your puzzle, this can just be a paper version that you drew yourself quickly with pencil. This is because you are testing the logic of the puzzle here, not whether people like it. Namely, you want to find out if the puzzle is not too difficult. The best tactic for this, however frustrating for your test subject, is to give them as little information as possible. After all, while they are trying to work their way through your puzzle, you can always give hints if they really can't figure it out.
Then you know that next you need to incorporate these "hints" more clearly into your puzzle. But don't forget that people are also allowed to think about your puzzle for a while; after all, you want them to be obstacles. That little bit of frustration that arises when people can't figure it out will make the 'win' feeling greater when they do succeed. So this is where you want to find the perfect balance.
Using a homemade escape box as a wedding gift
Enthusiastic about creating your own escape game but not sure how to deploy it? Escape games are incredibly versatile and can be used in many different ways. It can simply be a fun activity for a family day, but can also be used to convey information. For example, you can incorporate teaching material into it for the classroom or create a training session for colleagues.
But of course, you may also want to say something to someone, think of a wedding thank you for your wedding guests, a birthday gift where the birthday boy or girl has to puzzle his way to his gift or even a "gender reveal escape game.
In short, an escape game is great fun to make and to use. What are you going to make an escape game for?
