Escape Rooms: Education, With A Revolutionary Twist
A professional puzzle designer decodes the unexpected magic that ensues when students encounter escape rooms.
We stepped into the school far too early on a Tuesday morning, not knowing what to expect. The air was filled with the voices of chattering girls. Hundreds of footsteps rattled the wooden floorboards. Eventually, we were led to the library, where we were met by a team of teachers who had labored many hours to bring our vision to life.
“I may have cursed you more than once,” one of them admitted to me with a wry smile, “when we were counting out all the materials to divide them into bundles, and coordinating all the teachers manning the stations.”
More than eighty Year 8 girls trickled into the library. They were laughing, carefree, finished with their exams and ready for holidays. Unaware of what awaited them.
I suddenly wondered about the escape-room inspired program we had spent the past month designing. Would it be engaging enough for a large group of restless students? Would bringing puzzles into a traditional learning environment prove effective, as this story in Bright suggests?
One of the teachers clapped their hands to quiet everyone. A hush fell over the room.
It was time to find out.
At Next Level Escape, we don’t normally consider ourselves as being part of the educational landscape. We create escape rooms, where players are trapped in a series of rooms and must use the objects within to solve puzzles, open locks, and escape before time runs out.
Rooms are themed, with an overarching narrative that provides players with a reason — however fantastical — for effecting the escape. For example, one of our rooms has players escaping the literature world before midnight; the other, saving the city from an unstable alien artefact. We’ve also designed simpler rooms to promote the latest Justice League movie, where players had to figure out the last known location of various superheroes in order to escape.
It wasn’t until this September, when the educational value of escape rooms and their propensity to extend into school curriculums knocked on our door.
Two school teachers approached us, wanting to know if we could design a five-day active learning course for their students, aged 12 to 13. We had never done anything like it before. Naturally, we jumped at the chance. We told them we’d come back with a detailed proposal by the start of October. And almost immediately, a puzzle of a very unique kind was born: How do you extract the core concepts of an escape room and adapt them for a cohort of eighty young girls?
When designing the overarching theme for the program, we had one clear outcome in mind: We wanted the girls to be able create their own puzzles; to design their own mini escape rooms with confidence.
The ability to design puzzles draws from a wide range of skills in STEAM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics). For example, creating a simple cipher puzzle might involve linking words to numbers, or translating a pattern to numbers. This can be achieved through simple or complex mathematical processes. It can also pull in other disciplines, such as linking symbols to elements in the periodic table.
Puzzles can also be physical, like manoeuvring an object through an obstacle course where interaction is limited, or navigating a laser field. This calls for certain engineering skills, including a basic grasp of physics to create something playable, as well as the coordination to design and build the object.
Designers of puzzles also have to think laterally. What disparate objects can be linked together to create a solution? Some of the best puzzles evoke ‘ah-hah!’ moments — something that made no sense seconds ago suddenly clicks, and the solution seems so obvious, you wonder how you could have missed it. For instance, a notebook with colour-coded pages might link to coloured words on a wall, where each page identifies a word to make a message. In a world of big data where we’re endlessly bombarded by information, pattern recognition and filtering for key information are crucial skills. Learning to design with those skills sets you on a path towards mastering them.
Technology further enhances a puzzle and helps bring a sense of magic to the room. With the proliferation of cheap microcontrollers such as Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, it’s easier than ever to incorporate interactive, tech-driven elements. A simple circuit with a sensor and an output, together with basic code, can set in motion a range of events once a certain condition is fulfilled. Touch a panel and a board lights up. Shine a light in the correct location and a door opens.
The possibilities stretch as far as the imagination.
As important as puzzles are, simply having them in place isn’t enough to make an escape room entertaining.
A good room needs a strong narrative to give the players a sense of purpose; a reason to solve puzzles beyond mere curiosity. It uses the arts to seamlessly tie together the puzzles into a logical fit for the situation. Anything less, and players get thrown out of the immersion.
Think about it. If you were told you were on a space ship, but one of the puzzles required you to decipher numbers haphazardly painted on a wall, you wouldn’t feel like you were on a space ship. You’d feel like you were in a room trying to solve puzzles. Instead, what if you had to input directions to navigate an asteroid field, based on a map and a set of video logs?
Interior design and artistic skills often come into play. Walls, lighting, furnishings, props — everything feeds into creating a full experience for players.
All of which brings us back to that hushed library room full of restless Year 8 students.
We designed the five-day course to gradually introduce students to puzzles and narrative before finally creating their own. And what better way to do it than to have them play through some games themselves — with their curriculum from the year woven in?
The first day was simply about solving a wide variety of puzzles. The girls split into five-member groups, before racing through the stations set up around the large library. For the more difficult puzzles, it wasn’t uncommon to see a group attempt it, leave, then come back later for a second attempt. A few determined girls refused to let the puzzles get the better of them, and remained at the stations with stubborn determination.
On the second day, we introduced chained puzzles and a narrative. There was a ripple of excitement when the girls were told they would be chasing a notorious thief across the world (in reality: the school grounds) and decide on his ultimate fate.
The third day saw us finally get down to the nitty gritty of puzzle design. We gave a live demo of the processes involved in designing a puzzle. Following this, the students split up into groups again and tried their hand at designing their own.
In the final two days, the girls would bring together everything they’d learnt, and create their own mini escape rooms. These final days required the students to be fully engaged, to think laterally, to be passionate about using different skills, to find innovative ways to challenge others as they had been challenged.
To quote one of the girls: It was intense.
It was amazing to see a number of groups creating puzzles that wouldn’t have been out of place in a professional escape room. They applied creative thinking to logical puzzles within the constraints of limited time and resources, and without a guiding structure or teacher to provide the answers.
However, it was only at the very end of our time there that we realized the extent to which the escape room experience had helped students learn to think beyond the bounds of convention.
A problem arose just before recess. Several girls didn’t want to switch back to their usual groups the next day. They’d come up with an excellent idea in their current group and wanted more time. The girls went around pleading with the teachers and even with us, but to no avail. The teachers held firm: These groups weren’t meant to last beyond that day.
Thirty minutes later, we were approached by some girls holding a large sheet of butcher’s paper filled with colorful scrawls.
“Sign our petition,” they said, brandishing it triumphantly and holding out a marker. “We’re going to present this to the teachers and tell them everyone wants to stay in the groups they’re in today.”
The students we were with signed the makeshift petition without hesitation. The petitioners even approached the teachers for signatures, much to our (and the teachers’) amusement. To their credit, the teachers had a private discussion and agreed to hear the girls out.
“They’re taking initiative and finding their own solutions to a problem,” one of the teachers pointed out. “It’s fantastic to see them so engaged and passionate. We should encourage it.”
Another teacher, clearly worried this could turn into another pleading session, said firmly to the girls, “You must take this seriously and present compelling arguments. The teachers will then discuss and come to a decision.”
The girls grinned, and the student with the petition nodded earnestly. With the foresight and revolutionary chutzpah typical of any great escape room designer, she responded: “We have three speakers ready.”
About Next Level Escape:
Founded in mid-2016, Next Level Escape is currently owned by two self-proclaimed nerds who are overly obsessed with Portal references: Co-founder Aaron Hooper, and Leanne Yong. They design and build all their puzzles and props, combining high-tech and low-tech elements to create puzzles that fit seamlessly into the narrative.
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