Escape Rooms for the Family to do at Home
This year, for a team-building exercise with my colleagues at work, we went to an escape room together. I was honestly incredibly impressed with the whole thing. There was a great story, an attractive design, and spectacularly clever puzzles. They had us trying to playing the right tune on a piano, dancing the right steps on a carpet, turning 4 keys in 4 different locks at the same time - and locks were automatically springing open all over the place. It was so cool.
I went home and I knew I wanted to share something like that with my family, but with our young kids it needed to be something a little bit less complex. Lucky for us, there is a growing market for family escape room experiences that you can do in the comfort of your own home, and we’ve been experimenting with a lot of them.
Many of these at-home experiences are designed to do around a single table - although there are exceptions to that too. And while you may not have the impressive set design of a professional escape room, many elements of immersion are up to how much effort you want to put in. Add the right music from a website like Melodice, put on some costumes, add some decorations to the room - it’s all up to you.
There are so many things we love about doing these escape room experiences. First and foremost, it’s a collaborative adventure for the family. It’s like taking our love for cooperative board games and throwing in a big heap of role playing on top. The teamwork and the immersion are definitely highlights.
The escape rooms also obviously appeal to our love for logic games and solving puzzles. And while solving a puzzle during normal logic games is satisfying, solving a devilish puzzle with the help of your family while a timer is running and you’re on a sinking ship is on another level entirely.
After trying out several different escape room experiences - there are certainly a few that we’d whole-heartedly recommend to others as well. There’s something to love about all of them, but which one to choose might depend on the age of the kids you’re playing with. Some series are definitely harder and certainly geared towards older kids, while some are designed for kids to do almost entirely independently.
If you’re looking to share an escape room experience with your family, hopefully our thoughts and experiences can help you find the right one for you. And maybe you and your little ones will soon fall in love with this rewarding and engaging family activity too.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article are affiliate links. Clicking on those links will lead you to view the games’ listings on Amazon.
1. ThinkFun’s Escape the Room
ThinkFun has long been a favorite publisher of logic games in our house - and I was excited to discover that they were getting in on the escape room fun too. I have a lot of trust in the quality of their games, and they certainly didn’t disappoint us. In fact, I think that their experience with logic games shines through in the quality of their puzzles.
They currently have two different escape rooms on the market - Mystery at the Stargazer’s Manor and Secret of Dr. Gravely’s Retreat. And they have another spooky-sounding one coming soon: The Cursed Dollhouse. And if you’re wondering which one to try, Stargazer’s Manor is recommended for ages 10+ and Dr. Gravely’s Retreat for 13+.
We played Mystery at the Stargazer’s Manor with our 7-year-old, and it went incredibly well. Out of all the escape rooms we’ve played as a family, this game did the best at making us feel like a real team. Other series are sometimes too hard for our son, but this game had the perfect difficultly level to involve our son as a real member of the team, while still challenging Mom and Dad too.
As we progressed through the game, we unlocked new envelopes and poured the contents onto the floor. And I was very impressed by the quality of the components in the box. There were maps and things to construct, and you had to keep track of everything you collected throughout the game.
I was also thoroughly impressed with the story in this game. I love how the mystery slowly unraveled as we played, with new story cards to read after every puzzle that we solved. I think it’s important to put focus on the story at the heart of these games, and ThinkFun might be the best of the bunch at this so far. If you visit their website, they even go so far as to recommend music to play and costumes you might want to wear.
2. Exit: The Game
We’ve played a few different stories from the Exit series, and they’re extremely well crafted. But, even though we try to play the ones that they rate the “easiest”, they are still definitely the hardest family escape rooms on this list. And they certainly take us the longest amount of time to complete. Even with the full brain power of Mom and Dad engaged, it’s not unusual for us to take longer than 2 hours.
Obviously that could either be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on who you are playing with. If you have older kids, or if you’re playing only with adults, Exit is a fantastic choice. But with our 7-year-old, there always seem to be a few puzzles involved that he simply couldn’t feasibly help with. And we’ll risk losing his attention - or, worse, leaving him feeling a little left out.
The puzzles are incredibly inventive in these games. There are often several moments of awe as you sit back and reflect on just how creative the designers were. You truly have to think outside of the box sometimes, and it’s extremely delightful to solve some of these riddles. And their scoring system is great - allowing you to rate your performance based on your speed and use of hints.
And it’s also important to point out that the difficultly doesn’t stop our 7-year-old from playing with us. And that’s probably due to the fact that Exit truly delivers on the stories and atmosphere as well. I truly appreciate the spooky settings, and, with the right music playing, it’s easy to get immersed in the story.
Another thing to keep in mind about the Exit games is that they are designed to only be played once - because you’re going to be folding and cutting and writing on the materials inside. Personally I have a lot of trouble ruining the contents like that - so I always stick items in the copier at those times. I’m probably ruining a little bit of the immersion, but I like to imagine that we could play the game again in a few years if we wanted.
3. Escape Kit
The escape room experiences designed by Escape Kit are perfect for something like a kid’s birthday party with a few friends. They have several options that are specifically designed for younger kids - even as young as 6 years old. Obviously this is perfect for us with our son, and he would also tell you with 100% certainty that Escape Kit escape rooms are his favorite.
Disclosure: Escape Kit provided us with two of their kits. We only feature and recommend things we love, and all thoughts and opinions are our own.
And the reason that Escape Kit adventures are his favorite is not merely that they are a little easier for him - it’s much more than that. The main reason he loves them is because of the immersion. He was absolutely blown away by The Sleeping Curse - an escape room adventure set in a world of wizards very much like Harry Potter. And his favorite part was that the design of the game actually has you running all over your own house trying to find the hidden clues (much more similar to the experience of hunting around an actual, physical escape room).
The moment he saw that there were labels around the house on different rooms (the dungeon, the library, etc.) and that he wasn’t just going to be sitting around the table, he was beyond excited. And the day was honestly a huge success. He would do a new one of these every day if he could.
By comparison, The Cursed Treasure (another Escape Kit adventure) didn’t have him running all over the house - but I was still able to hide components for the adventure all over the room and decorate our surroundings in a way that other escape rooms in a box just don’t do. In fact, all of the kits we’ve tried include optional decorative items like posters. It was another huge success, and hiding the treasure in a very specific place was a lot of fun.
Since I’m setting things up and hiding things with these kits, I can’t always be a part of the team because I might know the answer. But our son can basically do some of these almost entirely independently, with just a little help from Mom as a teammate. And that’s why it would be perfect to set up for something like a birthday party too.
To play an Escape Kit adventure, you just have to buy a kit from their website, print everything out, and set the game up according to the instructions. Of course the printing and the cutting and setting things up around the house takes a good chunk of extra time that other escape room games don’t require for set up, but it’s more than worth it because of how engaged our son is and how much he loves it.
Have you ever done any escape rooms with your family - whether at a professional facility or at home? How was your experience? Let us know in the comments!
