Another Win brings Maxine to an official score of 3-0 vs escape rooms. Escape rooms can be a super fun hour spent with the fam! This is the first one I’ve done with my brother Matt’s family but I guarantee it won’t be the last. Happy 17th anniversary Matt & Crystal!

Not-So-Pro Tips

After winning a few escape rooms I’ve come up with a few simple strategies that have helped us win. These are obviously not bullet proof but they are pretty rock solid for all the medium difficulty rooms we’ve solved with time to chill.

Everyone should call out what they see and think

It really helps to hear everyone’s thoughts out loud. Escape rooms really aren’t that complicated but it can be really revealing to hear someone else explain a pattern that your brain didn’t recognize. In this last room there was a painted glass art piece that started flashing different colors of the painted glass and I was initially very stuck on the order of the colors and kept saying it out loud but it ended up being based on the quantity each color was lit despite the order.

Include everyone’s input

This header may be equally stated as “efficiently test all options”. It’s too easy to disregard something simple when you could have just tested it before writing it off. In the previous header I noted that I was focused on a series of colors instead of the quantity of each individual color and in that instance Maxine walked up to the puzzle and said, “Wait a minute, that’s not how that goes.” and solved the puzzle by moving a color to the left most location.

Only use elements once

Once a room element has solved a puzzle, it’s never solved any other puzzles for us so you can pack it away and consider it useless. There are some exceptions to this such as locations in the room but for the most part it seems like the game designers try and make the parts of the game only functionally useful for a single puzzle. We’ve used directions for multiple solutions but we’ve never used an element that you can physically move for more than one solution.

Don’t get emotional

Especially with siblings involved it’s really easy to get frustrated with their input, even if they’re just standing there holding up a broken wall box. ^_^ Being frustrated doesn’t solve problems. Remember that you can always ask for some assistance if you’re really stuck.