5 Escape Room Clues Ideas That Will Blow Your Mind

Escape rooms are designed to put participants in unfamiliar environments facing adrenaline-pumping situations. With tensions running high, most participants lose their sense of intuition and make mistakes that lose them time. Basic skills like being observant and communicating with teammates get lost in the wind of supercharged excitement. Escape room clues come in handy when the game master helps participants speed along their progress.

The kinds of escape room clues and how you hide them can add that extra pizzazz to the game. Would you like a few hints on how to create the perfect escape room clues that will enthrall your guests and totally blow their minds? Read on.

Clue #1: Make Use Of Black Light

Escape room designers are coming up with sets that are straight out of Hollywood studios. You will find lots of special effects that add to the thrill. Lighting can be used to hide, reveal, or highlight escape room clues in many different ways.

Consider creating clues that can only be seen using black light. Black lights are long wave ultraviolet lights that pick up special writings or drawings when all other light sources in the room are dimmed.

You can use glow in the dark paint or fluorescent dyes to write your clues on walls and doors. These will be invisible in normal lighting but highlighted when the black light is switched on and all other lights switched off. Have a lamp nearby that emits black light straight onto your hidden clue.

Clue #2: Manual Electricity Generators

Here’s one way to hide a clue while at the same time enhancing communication and cooperation between participants. Make the clue only visible to one participant, and only if another generates some electricity.

You can power a small LED screen with electricity. But the current should be provided by one participant cycling a stationary bike. Reset the puzzle if the cyclist stops, so they have to start again to reveal a new puzzle. This is a perfect clue-hiding technique for game rooms designed for corporate team building.  

Clue #3: Create Something That Doesn’t Belong

A classic design idea is to have something in the room that doesn’t quite belong. Or it belongs, but it’s set in a strange way.

Think of a kitchen oven in a detective’s office. What is it doing there? What is it hiding? What do I have to do to reveal its secrets? You can hide escape room clues in the baking/grilling space. Or you can make it such that when one turns the flame dials, a code is revealed.

Clue #4: Rearrange A Common Sequence

To create this clue, you can take a used PC keyboard and swap some or all of the letter or number keys. This can draw attention to the hidden clue when participants correctly rearrange the keys. The same principle can be applied by rearranging the dates or days of a wall calendar. Or the words of a famous passage or poem. Just make sure it’s easy enough to solve and well known by your crowd.

Clue #5: Use A Jigsaw Puzzle

You can create a special jigsaw puzzle that when correctly put together reveals a puzzle. Place it prominently in the room so participants find it.

This should be easy enough for anyone to crack. Just don’t make it too complicated that it might take the whole group the entire 60 minutes to crack. Don’t make a jigsaw with a thousand pieces. A simple one with 8 to 30 pieces should do the trick.

Create The Best Escape Room Clues

There are endless ways you can create and hide escape room clues if you’re a set designer. Whether it’s for a commercial property or a home DIY game to entertain the kids, you simply have to engage your imagination.

For simple DIY home games, use easily available objects found in the home or local stores. Be sure to make your clues and puzzles difficult enough to be interesting, but simple enough for your chosen age group to solve. If you’re catering to all age groups, create clues and puzzles that a 12-year-old can solve. Have fun designing your clues and watching your participants try to solve them.

Do you have any creative ideas on how to create and hide escape room clues? Share with us in the comments section.

 

References

Groupon – 5 Escape Room Tips from a Guy Who Designs Them