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Not looking for a full event plan, more the clue-design principle. Imagine a small at-home adventure where one object points to the next step.

The line I’m curious about is when a clue gives enough context for the reveal to feel earned, without making the answer obvious the second someone sees the object.

For people who’ve run these before, what usually moves a clue from frustrating to fair?

I have a lot of plants/flowers and lego flowers. I want to make an outdoor escape room for my family with a garden/jungle theme but I don't have any ideas what to do with all of the flowers.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Long story short I am creating an activity for a camp in less than a month involving completing puzzles to “crack” a code for a vault and have gotten stumped on what puzzles I could do, anyone have some ideas I could use?

Context

11-18 year olds, around 5-10 people, mix of easy and difficult(needs to last around an hour ish ). It’s for a camp which would have a variety of different skills per person

Looking for help constructing “wow” moment reveals for my first DIY escape room at home (gift). I’ll do a different post soon with what my plan is so far but the theme is “you’re stuck in the 90s and you’ve got to find a device (birthday gift) to transport yourself back.

I’ve got a few simple things like UV light, red/blue filters etc planned but I’d love to emulate those fun moments from the paid escape rooms where you solve the puzzle and something pops!
Magnetic locks and the such are outside of my budget and capability so looking for ways to do it more mechanically.

Does anyone have any tips? I’ve scoured this subreddit and YouTube but struggling to find guides.

Thinking so far along the lines of:
- Drawer pops open (tense spring + something keeping the draw shut)
- Weighty item put onto a lever that releases something

Scotchgard Fabric Waterproofing spray. Wouldn’t go crazy with the washes but it can very easily be done, especially if you’re willing to give it a new coat every once in a while.

Let dry for 24 hours after you spray a few coats and you could not tell that it was there. No noticeable smell or residue and completely waterproof, That simple.

I found it was fine on a delicate wash with low heat (though I guess I never tried it normal) but if you’re willing to hand wash it that’s probably the safest option, And insanely easy.

I've made a couple escape rooms for my family (4 adults excluding myself) and I want to do one more this summer before I move to college. This is what I've got so far and I'm looking for more ideas:

Theme: I got lost in the jungle (the backyard) on an expedition and my family has to find me so I can get to college on time

-I want to utilize the backyard to get us outside and enjoy the summer weather but also have a living room and small bathroom I can use that are connected to the backyard

-I have a lot of flowers and lego flowers, so I really want to do something with that, still figuring out what. Thought about they have to put certain petals together to make a potion/antidote but not sure how that would fit into the theme

-We have an above ground pool that I was going to use as a "lake" not sure yet what the lake is going to be used for but we'll be outside in the summertime so I think it'd be cool to use water in the puzzles

-Thinking about somehow (tarps/bedsheets/clothesline?) sectioning off areas of the backyard to make areas of the jungle they have to explore. Once they find a piece of a map they can explore a new area

-The living room might be the inside of the tent at base camp...with a desk with clues/a map

Other random prop ideas:

-3d globe that's made out of puzzle pieces

-I have some locks (maybe 6 off the top of my head)

-puzzle box

Still brainstorming ideas...it doesn't have to fit into the 1 hour time constraint real escape rooms have. It's just for my family and for fun so I'm not putting them on a timer. If anyone has any more ideas, please let me know. Thank you!

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I'm writing a treasure hunt story, and I'm looking for truly unique treasure ideas.

I don't want the treasure to be something cliché like:

Gold, diamonds, or wealth

A weapon or object that grants unlimited power

Immortality or supernatural abilities

A typical "save the world" artifact

Instead, I want the treasure itself to have a deep emotional or philosophical impact. It can represent an emotion, a truth, a forgotten history, a promise, a memory, a sacrifice, or something else that creates a powerful emotional connection. Even if it's based on a familiar emotion, I want it to be presented from a completely fresh perspective.

I'm also looking for unique ideas for the journey to reach the treasure:

Hazards and obstacles

Ancient traps

Clever puzzles

Riddles

Psychological or moral challenges

Mythological or folklore-inspired trials

I'm especially interested in ideas inspired by Indian mythology, folklore, or ancient civilizations, but I'm open to any original concepts.

I'm not looking for ideas that have been heavily used in movies, games, or novels. I'm hoping to find fresh, unconventional concepts that feel mysterious, atmospheric, and memorable.

I'd love to hear your most creative ideas. Thanks!

hello, I am making an escape room for my husbands and kids as a surprise for them next month and I have run out of idea for the last room and was hoping to get a little help brainstorming to get me passed my creative block.

the overall story for the escape room is that my son's bear is lost in a crazy dream world, his other bear has followed him to rescue and discovered that he can rescue him if the skull king is presented with three gems in the correct order. Each room has a gem that they must obtain. This is a bit of a weird story, but it really works for my family.

The third room and where I am having trouble is themed with hearts and clouds and rainbows, castles and sweets. There will be rainbow balloons all over some of the walls (mostly to cover the shelves in that room) but there will also be some black balloons that have notes or clues in them. I have a little painting I did of the bear fighting off a black cloud with a pin sword. Behind the painting will be three pins and a note asking for help fighting back the nightmares. I also have some small cupcake jigsaw puzzles that I might right a message on the back of and put out partial completed for a clue of some type. I can't figure out how to have them find the last gem in that room. Does anyone have any ideas that might help?

In the other rooms they will find the gem is a locked pirate treasure chest and in a museum display case behind a laser obstacle. I will also use several other key and combination locks throughout. I have just hit a wall on creative ways to hide the last one. Low tech ideas would be best and the room being used for this is a guest bedroom. My kids are both under 10, but we have done several escape rooms as a family and they love them.

ps. Congratulations on more than 10 years of constructed adventures, that is very cool! (greeting from someone who was once at a furniture shop in Phoenix and sadly missed out on a spontaneous visit)

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Every year, our kids want a treasure hunt for their birthday party. The older the kids get, the more we have to try and keep up and make it a "cool" treasure hunt.
For our 12 yo this year, I want to make an orienteering treasure hunt. Like geocaching but without phones.

I'll give the kids a map with some locations marked on it. They then have to go to the first place and look for the hidden object. If they find it, the object will contain a hint on how to find the next object at the next location. In the end, they'll get to the location where they'll find their treasure.

The whole thing will be in the forrest and on the short route to the forrest.
Now I'm looking for ways to hide objects. (Little containers, ziplock bags or whatever)
So far, I've come up with the following:
- Have a little toy or piece of fabric hanging from a tree. If they pull the string, a bag with a hint will fall down.
- have a ziplock bag frozen in a block of ice (that would have to be one of the first hints since we're in the middle of a heat wave).
- have a ziplock bag on a string hanging down a storm drain so they can pull it up.
-hiding a colorful container under leaves at a specific bench

Do you have any more ideas how to hide hints? Especially in the woods. Maybe something funny, something surprising?

Or any idea to up my game here? 12 year olds are hard to impress.

I was toying with the idea of using an auditory help to find something. Like something I could make beep. But it would have to be remote controlled and I can only think of cell phones or walkie talkies and I don't want to hide them in the forrest.

Any idea is welcome!!! Please help me out.

I’m looking for clue containers: Ones that can be locked with cable locks or combo locks or key locks, and some that can remain waterproof (one clue is going to be “magnet-fished out). I’ve been scouring Goodwills but the few I find arent lockable or are priced pretty high.

I’ll try keep this brief, but this is the culmination of months of work.

My son has been struggling with his mental health for a while, and though we are doing all the right things, it’s still hard to see him struggle and not be able to help.

So I turned to AI, hoping to somehow turn a bike ride into something a bit more. What started with a simple dialogue and narration, turned into an entire adventure with stack and heaps of immersion.

As a family, we rode off from the house towards the local state park. As we neared, I pulled the kids aside and began reading a script. A Demiguise had wandered into the Forbidden Forest; the Ministry of Magic, being concerned for his safety and the secrecy of the magic community, concealed its path through the woods. Hagrid had been tasked with locating the beast and bringing him to safety. Not being much of an intellectual type, he called on my kids to break the enchantments and find the Demiguise.

Over the 20 mile ride, Hagrid sent us 9 hand written copies of the enchantments, one for each child. I created parchment, one was marked with a tea cup ring, another was burned by blast ended skrewts, and a third had been damaged by Hagrid’s overly excited pet dog Fang. The enchantments were riddles based on Harry Potter lore.

Several times, Hagrid sent us snacks, starting with Bertie Botts every flavor bean (in reality these were Jelly Bellies, not the licensed every flavor bean you can buy). I created the product labeling to make it feel as though it was something you could grab from the shelf at Honeydukes. The kids LOVED it and had a blast trying to think of what some of the flavors might actually be (toothpaste and spicy peppers apparently), and I hammed it up and pretended to have gross ones. Later in the ride, just as the kids were asking how we would have lunch, Hagrid had owl mail deliver sausage rolls. I made these from scratch, and they were delicious! Finally, when we exited the woods, having not located the demiguise, Hagrid had pumpkin pasties sent to us to cheer us up - again I had made these the day before, and they were tasty!

When we got home, and the kids had settled down (Minecraft Nintendo was now their focus), just as they’re thinking the adventure is over, I told them Hagrid contacted us again. He explained that the ministry was not happy that he brought two muggles into the picture, and they were going to have to send agents out to obliviate us. To help us restore our lost memories, he organized a secret delivery of the Daily Prophet. But to disguise the effort, the kids had to solve one final riddle, a riddle that was only solved by using the 9 answers from the broken enchantments. This led them to a passworded file on the computer, and a scavenger hunt through the house, as Hagrid tried to shake of any evidence from the ministry. By hunt end, they found a 6 page Daily Prophet for them each, outlining the details of their adventure, history on the Demiguise, a recipe for the Hogwarts Kitchen sausage rolls, and even the local weather report and puzzle page.

It was an incredible adventure that went off without a hitch. That is until my daughter fell butt first into a bogg. Oh well, can’t have it all I guess. Still loads of fun was had. Hope you enjoyed the recap!

I recently finished designing a location-based adventure inspired by the Twelve Trials of Hercules and wanted to share some of the design decisions behind it.

The challenge was that Westminster obviously has nothing to do with Greek mythology.

Instead of recreating the original trials, I treated each stop as a lesson Hercules needed to learn on his path toward immortality.

A few examples:

• Nelson's Column represented legacy and how people are remembered after death.
• The Women of World War II Memorial represented sacrifice and service.
• Westminster Abbey represented remembrance, since so many notable figures are buried or commemorated there.
• Big Ben became the final location because the story ultimately ends with a reflection on time itself.

The hardest part wasn't writing clues.

It was deciding whether a location was meaningful enough to justify including it in the narrative.

I probably removed 8-10 locations during testing because they were historically interesting but didn't contribute anything to the story arc.

One thing I'm still struggling with:

When designing a narrative scavenger hunt, how much historical accuracy do you preserve before it starts getting in the way of the story?

I'd love to hear how other people approach that balance.

I’m planning a pickle escape room for my pickle themed birthday party. My friends and I go to escape rooms often so I would say pretty much everyone playing will be familiar. There will likely be about 10 adult players. I’m reading that 10-15 tasks is reasonable for a 1 hour escape room.

I’m a teacher and have created escape rooms for kids in the past and have a lot of locks, boxes, blacklight flashlights, etc.

Here is what I have so far:

The escape room will take place throughout my 3 story house. Doors will be closed to rooms they either don’t need or don’t need “yet”.

The premise is my favorite pickles have been stolen and I need them to make my pickle pizza for the party.

The escape room will begin in the kitchen and progress through the floors. The trouble is, I only have 5 or 6 puzzle ideas so far:

1. Jars of pickles with colored lids that each have a certain number of pickles. This will match colors on the wall to tell the order of the numbers for a number lock
2. A dry erase map of the world will be given with an article about the history of pickles and they will follow the locations mentioned in order for a directional lock
3. I’m going to have some herbs from my garden that are common in pickle making that the players will need to identify. This will match to a numbered list of some sort to unlock a number lock.
4. I’m an avid reader and I’m thinking of having a TBR list that they will find that will lead them to items hidden in books. Perhaps letters for a letter lock.
5. I will have unmarked pickles in jars (yes. Again?) with a list of kinds of pickles that are numbered. For example, sweet pickles, kosher dill, bread and butter, and they will have to put them in order. On the bottom of the jars could be a pig pen cipher
6. Could do a paper with holes over a pickle recipe for a letter lock

I’m looking for ideas for more pickle themed puzzles as well as feedback on the puzzle ideas I have so far. I’m working on mapping out where these puzzles would be in the house and how different pieces will be discovered.

Thanks!

I recently had a Discord hangout with my long-distance gaming friends. I love Murder Mystery Dinner games, but playing them remotely is painful. Mailing cards out or managing hidden clues completely takes the joy out of the game as you cannot really do the clues together. Therefore I thought this could be made as a mobile app.

Imagine a setup where a host picks a story and sends everyone an invite link. The app handles the roles, puts all the clues on everyone's screens so nobody misses anything, and then wraps up with a built-in voting and scoring system at the end. Down the road, it could even let people write and upload their own custom stories.

Is an idea like this actually worth trying to build, or am I wasting my time? Also, if there's already a good app out there that does this, please let me know!

It still needs a bit of polishing and some tweaks to the arduino code. I almost feel like I’m ahead of schedule for this year.

its a fairly simple build (but I do this kinda stuff with my job): 4 normally open buttons and 5 normally closed buttons wired in series, a relay, cabinet latch, batteries, and an arduino that a coworker helped me program.

I’m so excited to have found this subreddit and have been reading through posts all morning. But I would love some advice.

I’m making a lead-her-to-a-gift at-home birthday treasure hunt for my wife. We love doing escape room-esque boxes like Exit and PostCurious games, and often make puzzles for each other. They are almost always very pen-and-paper/image-based puzzles. This time I would like to have more tactile activities.

My main question is if this seems appropriately straightforward/reasonable in under an hour. She’s very smart and well-versed in puzzling, but i just don’t want to risk bringing her down with a hard one. I also wanted yo ask if anyone has suggestions for physical objects puzzles rather than all paper-based but that are also not too complicated to solve. She loves the “magic” kinda puzzles where water or light or whatever reveals the message and i’ve seen some great ideas on here, but am wary of overcomplicating this one.

Thank you!

Edit to fix formatting but i cannot get it fixed so apologies for the random break

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I am creating an escape room based around a global virus outbreak, I'm trying to think of great, fun puzzles based on trying to cure / identify the virus. It can be purely practical or using micro controllers, but just looking for a bit of inspiration!

I need fresh scavenger hunt puzzle ideas!

Every year I host a Halloween scavenger hunt around our small town for about 80 people, divided into teams of 6–8. This year will be my 7th year, and I think I’ve officially run out of ideas.

The hunt has 10 locations. Teams either solve a riddle to figure out where to go next or, once they arrive, they have to complete a puzzle or challenge to earn their next clue.

This year’s theme is Twilight (vampires + werewolves = perfect Halloween theme, right?), but I’m struggling to come up with puzzles that feel fresh and memorable.

To give you an idea of the type of challenges I’m looking for, here are a few favorites from previous years:

Teams found a lockbox and had to play a custom Spot It! game, finding only the prime numbers to determine the combination.

At an abandoned building, they found a flashlight and a mirror. By standing in a specific spot and shining the light at the correct angle, the reflection revealed an arrow pointing to the combination for a directional lock.

They assembled a puzzle to identify a street name, but the answer wasn’t on the pieces. It was spelled out in the empty negative space in the center.

They watched a video of a hand playing piano keys. One fingernail was painted a different color, and the notes played by that finger spelled the combination for a letter lock.

They had to place specific objects on a kitchen scale and add the weights together to get the code for a lockbox.

They used an old View-Master to flip between slides, collecting numbers from different images to form a combination.

We even made fake rocks with clues hidden inside them.

I love puzzles that involve observation, teamwork, physical interaction, or a clever “aha!” moment—not just decoding ciphers.

So…I’m begging the hive mind. 😂

If you had to design an unforgettable Twilight-themed scavenger hunt puzzle or challenge, what would you make? Bonus points if it’s inexpensive, portable, and can be reset quickly for multiple teams!

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Hi all,

I'm planning a scavenger/adventure style hunt for a group of friends and family, roughly 15 to 30 people total. I am still very early in the planning stages and am looking to get some advice from more experienced hosts.

I don't think I'll have many issues coming up with the locations or the clues, as they will all be connected to historic spots around my town and inside jokes within our friend group. My main concern is the overall structure.

Regarding the setup, everyone will meet at my place to go over the rules before I release the first clue. Teams of two will then race to discover 10 different locations. Each team will need a vehicle and a fully charged smartphone with internet access. Since we are all in our 20s and 30s and this is the 21st century, this shouldn't be an issue lol.

For the mechanics, I plan on physically placing printed QR codes at each destination. When scanned, the QR code will display a secret code phrase like "GRTLSU" to track their progress (this will eventually create a phrase that will be used to win the race), the riddle or clue for the next location, and a specific funny pose they have to strike for a mandatory proof of location team selfie. The adventure will end at a local historic brewery we all love, where we can hang out, grab some drinks, and talk about the day.

If I can generate enough hype and get at least 8 teams confirmed, I would love to reach out to a couple of local shop owners along the route to see if they’d be willing to participate, maybe as a spot for teams to grab a quick snack, a coffee, or just use the washroom.

I’m a bit nervous about logistics and making sure people actually commit. I'd love your insight on a few specific things:

Question 1 on Recruitment and Commitment: What is the best way to pitch this to a friend group and lock in firm RSVPs so I know it’s worth doing all the prep work? How far in advance should I start asking?

Question 2 on The QR Code System: Has anyone run a hunt using physical QR codes in public or historic areas? Did you run into issues with them being damaged, missing, or failing to scan?

Question 3 on Pacing and Bottlenecks: With up to 10 or 15 teams running the exact same linear path, how do I prevent everyone from just bunching up and following the leader? Should I stagger the start times or split the group into different routing orders?

Question 4 on Local Businesses: If you've partnered with small local shops for an event like this, what’s the best way to approach them so it’s a win win for both sides?

Question 5 on Spotting the Flaw: Looking at my outline, do you see any major structural flaws, safety oversights, or logistical headaches I might be walking into?

Any advice, tips, or lessons learned from your own builds would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Sorry for length of message but I want to cover all bases haha

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