Open Sesame

Welcome to the Open Sesame DIY escape room site. Here you will find advice, tips, and ideas to create an escape room in your very own home.

What is an Escape Room?

An escape room is an interactive game where a group of players work together to solve a sequence of puzzles to “escape” their current environment or complete some other themed objective. The players are “trapped¹” in a room with a theme and given a dire scenario that they must solve (e.g. “You are trapped in a dungeon facing eminent execution,” or “Deadly aliens have boarded your spaceship and are coming to eat your heads.”)

What makes an escape room unique is that the puzzles to be solved are integrated into the physical room(s) the players are in. Locks click open, containers offer new objects to manipulate, and doors open to new spaces to explore. All these supply an immediacy and importance to the puzzles being solved.

Commercial vs. DIY Escape Rooms

There are thousands of establishments throughout the world providing escape room games. If you live in an urban area, chances are there is an escape room near you. For a fee, you and a group of friends can be immersed in an escape room of themed construction for a truly immersive environment. The room’s design and puzzles can be especially intricate. Considering it can be used around 8 times a day for many years, extra expense can be used to custom build the room.

In contrast, a DIY escape room is a makeshift escape room in your home (or other conveniently available space). Your improvised escape room won’t have the customized set of a commercial escape room (unless you really like set construction), but with a bit of imagination, you can replicate the same experience in your own home.

Why DIY Escape Rooms?

Given the abundance commercial escape rooms, why go through the trouble of making your own? There are several reasons, actually.

Customize for the players

Although commercial escape rooms come in many themes and difficulty levels, they are ultimately designed for a general audience. In contrast, when creating a DIY escape room at home, you will probably know exactly who the players will be. This allows you to customize the game for them.

Making an escape room for a children’s birthday party? Simplify the puzzles and throw in some fun activities. Making an escape room for a group of friends that have done many before? Expand on the puzzles you all already know and add an added level of complexity. Do the players share a common interest or knowledge (such as a particular movie or TV series)? Build a room and puzzles around that.

Cost

A commercial escape room will run well over $100 USD for a 1 hour group activity, which makes it not cheap. In contrast, a DIY escape room can potentially be constructed from materials around the house.

I won’t promise that a DIY escape room is free (even discounting the personal time it will take to prepare the room). You will probably need to purchase some locks to get started. And I do find myself spending some money each time buying parts for physical puzzle items. But ultimately, your budget is controlled by you, so you can spend as little or as much as you like.

Play with any group size

To maximize their profit, a commercial escape room tries to maximize the amount of people playing at one time. This is typically done by imposing minimum group sizes or combining strangers from independent groups together.

So with a commercial escape room you are likely to participate with a party of 8-10 people. Unfortunately, with a group that large some people are inevitably going to miss out on much of the puzzle solving.

With a DIY escape room, there is no real incentive to bundle large groups. The DIY escape room works just as well, if not better, for a small group of friends. In fact, groups can be broken up based on skill level, so that less advanced players have more chance to participate.

No time limits

A commercial escape room is booked several times throughout the day. That means that there is a finite time players can use the escape room before it has to be cleared out and reset for the next reservation. Consequently, players are given a time limit (usually 1 hour) to solve all the puzzles. If the players need more time, then they fail and are kicked out, which makes for a much less satisfying experience.

A DIY escape room has no such limitation. Players can be given enough time (and hints) as necessary to complete all the puzzles. Regardless of skill level or luck, the players can always be given the satisfaction of completing everything.

You can always make more

Even if you have the money to regularly go to escape rooms, you will still be limited by the escape rooms available. Escape rooms have low replayability, and new escape rooms are slow to be built. Eventually, you will run out of escape rooms to try in your area. DIY escape rooms are limited only by your imagination.

Trapped at home

I originally got started with DIY escape rooms during the global COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, many communities such as my own were under mandated lockdown, and all commercial escape rooms were closed. But a DIY escape room does not require you to leave your house. So, it is a great activity for those times when you are forced together.