Unfair Hiding Places

Discovering a clue in a fun, unexpected place can be very rewarding. However, it is extremely frustrating to get stuck because you are missing an important clue and cannot move forward. Before thinking about where to place items, it is best to first consider where they should not be hidden. Here we will consider the best practices when placing items in the room.

These, of course, are only suggestions that I try to follow when placing items. If you and your players like difficult Easter egg hunts and want to make that part of the games, you can hide things in more difficult places. But it is important that eventually players will be able to find all the items and identify what is and is not part of the game.

Establish bounds

When making a DIY escape room in your home, not every object and space that you use for day-to-day life will be part of the game. When setting up the escape room, make it clear from the beginning what is part of the game and what is not.

Likely, you will not be using every room in your home for your escape room. Make sure it is clear to the players which rooms they will be using. This can be done by making simple barriers such as closing doors or hanging sheets. Alternately, you can simply tell the players which rooms will be in bounds.

You probably don’t have empty rooms in your house just waiting to build an escape room. (I don’t.) There might be shelves or cabinets that hold books, knickknacks, crockery, etc. It is best to keep these separate from the game, especially if they don’t match the theme of the game. Once again, you can cover up these items with a sheet or just let players know to ignore those items.

Don’t encourage players to tear apart the room

One of the reasons to make clear where objects might be is to discourage players from ransacking the room. You don’t need the hassle of players pulling cushions off of a couch, removing sheets off of a bed, upturning chairs, or otherwise moving furniture around. In addition to being a pain to clean up afterwards, such actions could interfere with the game itself.

Thus, avoid hiding objects in places that are not in open spaces or obvious containers (like drawers, cabinets, or boxes). Don’t shove objects under a couch or in its cushions. Don’t hide things in sheets or under a mattress. If a clue could be hidden in any nook or cranny, players will need to pull the place apart to find them.

Players should be able to easily reach objects

You don’t want players climbing over furniture to reach things. That will just encourage players to move furniture around, which you don’t want, or hurt themselves climbing over furniture, which you also don’t want. Thus, don’t place anything on top of furniture or shelves that are out of reach of players. That way you can inform players at the start that they won’t need to climb to reach anything and remind them if they attempt it.

Likewise, it’s not great to have players crawling underneath tables, chairs, or beds (unless that is specifically part of the puzzle). I usually avoid hiding things underneath furniture.

Make it clear which objects are part of the game

As players inspect objects in the game, it should be clear which ones are part of the game and will be used to solve puzzles. Granted, not every object will be part of a puzzle. There will likely be props or other items that serve no specific purpose. But there should be a limited amount of items players need to deal with. It’s not fair to make players go through a hundred books or other objects on shelves with no clues about which ones are important.

Breaking the rules as part of a puzzle

As stated at the beginning, the suggestions here are not unbreakable rules. It is up to you to choose how difficult finding objects needs to be. That said, these suggestions can also be broken if there is another clue, such as a message or map, to lead players to find the object. In that case, the challenge is not finding the object but solving the puzzle that leads to the object. You can place an object out of reach if there is a tool to reach it. I have also suggested avoiding having players crawl over or under objects. But, of course, this does not apply if you want to add physical tasks, perhaps as part of the theme, that players need to complete.

Underneath

A simple hiding place is a message underneath another object. The object can be a simple prop such as a plate or cup. For example, your escape room might have this normal place setting.

The players are expected to search around for clues. Simply lifting up the objects reveals a hidden clue.

This is a simple puzzle that encourages players to interact with the objects in the room. Players usually find the clue simply by picking up and examining objects. The clue gets revealed secondhand as players move things around.

The hiding place works best when hidden underneath a prop that is not otherwise needed. The prop should be easy to move and is easy to handle.

Underside

Place a clue on the bottom side of an object. This puzzle works similarly to placing a clue underneath an object except that the clue is stuck to the underside.

The fun part about this puzzle is that sometimes players will pick up an object to look underneath it, but miss the note that is stuck to the underside.

In the example from the previous puzzle, the players might check underneath the plates in a place setting, but find nothing.

The players may check several times before looking at the bottom of the plate where the real clue is.

Tea Light Message

In this puzzle, the players are presented with what appears to be an ordinary tea light candle.

The candle is lit for the players, and for a while it is just a normal candle like any other prop. But if the players happen to look back at the candle later, they might notice something forming in the wax.

Later, the candle’s wax becomes completely clear, and the message is clearly visible.

This challenge does not require the players to solve anything. Rather this is a hidden item that is difficult to find even though it is clearly placed among the game items. It is difficult because when the players first start the game, the message cannot be seen and, after an initial glance, the players may not take a close enough look again. Plus, it is just a fun effect.

This puzzle is created by deconstructing a tea light candle and placing a paper with the message drawn on it underneath the wax. Start with a fresh tea light (with uncolored wax) and pop the wax out of its metal bowl.

Next, cut out a piece of paper in a circle that can fit at the bottom of the metal bowl. Plain white copy paper works well. (The paper will not burn as long as you don’t let the candle burn all the way out, and you will have plenty of time before that.) You can use wax to trace out the shape.

After tracing the circle, cut out the paper and write the message on the paper. Place the paper against the wax with the message pressed against the wax and then place the wax, wick, and message back in the metal bowl with the message on the bottom.

The tea light candle is now ready to be lit.

Note that in the pictures above, I’ve taken out the wick, fed the wick through a hole in the paper, and placed the paper between the wax and the base of the wick. In the tea lights I was using, the wick was not attached to the wax (before it was lit). In other tea lights, the wax is already melted to the wick. If this is the case, you probably won’t be able to remove the wick without breaking it. In this case, you can probably just put the paper under both wax and wick. Just make sure none of the message is underneath the wick base.

I recommend testing this before using it in your escape room. The main thing to get right is making sure the timing works well. When I first built mine, I found that it took between 1 hr and 1 1/2 hr to fully see the writing on the paper. This is too long as your escape room will probably finish in this time.

I worked around this problem by lighting the candle before the escape room and waiting the 1 - 1 1/2 hr to see the message and then blow the candle out. When the candle cools down, the wax will become opaque again and the message will be obscured. When I lit it again for the escape room, it now only took about 30 minutes to become clear. You might be able to quicken the time by removing some of the wax instead, but it will likely be hard to do precisely.

At any rate, there will be a long delay between when the candle is lit and when the message is visible. As such, it is probably not fair to make the players light the candles as part of the puzzle. First, players have no way of knowing if their actions are helping solve the puzzle. Second, a puzzle that requires players to wait around for 30 minutes will not be very fun. Instead, light the candle as players enter the room. It works best to make this part of the escape room scenario (for example like the ghost chasers escape room).

Maps

In this puzzle, an important object is hidden somewhere players are not expected find. To find the object, players first need to get a map that will lead them to the correct place.

The map is of the escape room that the players are in. The map does not have to be detailed, but it should have enough landmarks for players to orient the map and find the location it is pointing to. Here is a simple map I once used to lead players to find a key hidden in the window drapes.