Simple DIY Escape Room

Do you want an escape room, but you don't want to pay the thirty-dollar fee to get in? Well here's your big chance. I built a simple, yet complex escape room in our attic, for my teenage siblings. The best thing about DIY escape rooms, is how flexible they are. You can give your escape room one of many different categories including: Space, Prison, Office, Military, Detective, Western, Spy, Pirates, or Historical. You can also incorporate a variety of different puzzle types including: Ciphers, Riddles, Ropes, Locks, or Mazes. I this instructable, I am going to give you the main set up of my escape room. And get creative. But most of all, have fun!

• Paper
• Good room for escape room (with keyhole on the inside)
• Locks and Padlocks
• Ropes Cardboard
• Computer
• Copy machine
• Lockbox
• Various other clues, and mazes

For the escape room, you want a room that has a key hole on the inside. If you don't have a room like this in your house, you can probably remove the handle from a door, and switch it around.

Secondly, you probably want a messy room, with a lot of miscellaneous things laying around, to use for clues, and to hide things under.

A third small detail, is that you may want a room with no windows, such as a basement room, to make it more mysterious.

Go into the room you are going to use, and figure out how to incorporate different objects and places in the room into your game. Then sit down, and write and make different puzzles, mazes, riddles, and clues. I have also provided a PDF file of an Iron Man picture puzzle.

Here are my steps for hiding my clues.

1. I placed a model rocket on a container in my attic, and placed the instructions manual beside it. in the instructions manual, were clues to the engine, and inside the engine, was my Iron Man picture puzzle.
2. The puzzle led to a box of movies, and in the Iron Man movie case, was a clue to the shoe shelf.
3. In a shoe on the shoe shelf was a puzzling phrase, about meatballs and noodles, which led to the pool noodles, in the rafters.
4. In the pool noodles, was a message about t-shirt quilts, that led to a bin of painting t-shirts.
5. A note in the t-shirt bin, about the temperature, led to the small fan in the room.
6. In the handle of the fan, was a word puzzle that, in turn, led to a pair of Cowboy boots.
7. In the Cowboy boots, was a note leading to a Cardboard Pyramid and an ultraviolet light.
8. For this game, I had built a Cardboard Pyramid, with a hidden door in the bottom. The Pyramid contained a circle combination maze, and a blank sheet of paper, with a cryptic message to the hiding place of the key, written in ultraviolet ink.

Remember. Where you hide the clues and how hard the clues are, depends largely on the age group your are making the game for.

I have provided a PDF file of the combination maze. Print off the page and write the key to the combination lock on the page along the route of solving the puzzle. Add in more letters and numbers in different places, to create more confusion.

I also built a large lockbox out of pallet wood. A simple gate latch can easily hold it shut. Where you hie the box, will depend on the room, and the size of the box. For me I removed some of the paneling in the attic, and placed the box, behind the attic walls.