Internet

Although not really practical for a commercial escape room, the internet is a handy resource to incorporate into a home escape room. Email and web are so integral in today’s life that putting part of the materials online is a fun and easy way to make puzzles more interesting. Just have the players bring in their smartphones to access puzzles and clues you put on the internet. Here are some free resources to set that up.

QR Codes

A QR code is the name for those square computer codes like that shown here. They are very convenient for taking a smartphone to a specific web site. With the most recent versions of iPhone and Android, you can just point the camera at the QR code, and you can tap right to the QR’s web page. QR codes are a convenient way to take players to an online clue or puzzle.

There exist many free QR code generators. Just search the web for them. The one I used was QR Stuff because it provides a service to shorten the URL to make more robust codes.

Online Documents

To incorporate the web into your puzzles, you will have to create online content. You don’t have to be an expert in web site design to create content. There are very simple ways to post something. A very simple way is to post a document online.

Google Docs is a convenient way to create an online document. Simply write the document in your browser, and then share it to get a URL to view it. Then use the aforementioned QR code generators to get players to that URL. Alternately, there are other file storage sites that allow you to share files such as Dropbox, OneDrive, and many others.

Web Site Builders

Simply posting a document might not look as nice as you would like. A page-based document won’t reformat itself for view on different mobile devices. A simple HTML-based web page might look nicer.

There are lots of ways to build web pages. If you happen to know how to create your own web pages, that’s a great way to make content. But if you are not experience in web page building, don’t worry. There are lots of free easy tools available to create content.

Web page builders range from simple editors without a lot of control to complex. A good place to start is Google Sites, which is easy, but does not give you a lot of control.

Forms

Instead of writing a code into a lock, a puzzle can involve entering the correct response into a web form. Once again, rather than writing your own HTML code to create a form, you can use one of the numerous online form builders. Google Forms has a nice feature that allows you to “validate” responses that players have. Another nice feature is that you can embed a Google Form inside of a Google Site so you can mix form and other HTML elements.