School’s out for the summer: Now let’s build an escape room…

This summer, we partnered with DiscoverE at the University of Alberta to do a one of a kind summer camp. From July 8-12, campers between the ages of 10-12 years old joined us in a week of story writing, design, prototyping, building and making with the goal of creating a fully functional escape room in only 5 days.

Starting from scratch with an empty classroom on Monday, campers took the theme of space and began to design an escape experience to present at the end of the week. What would the story be? Where was it going to take place? What puzzles were people going to have to solve? These were all questions that the campers had to answer.

Seeing the enthusiasm for the task at hand was amazing! Campers faced the challenge head on and set out to create a challenging build. It was two separate rooms in one. People solving the room would be split into two teams and be either be in mission control or on the star cruiser. They would then need to figure out how to communicate (unlocking the backup radios) and then solve problems for the other team to complete a common goal. It was an ambitious concept that reaped the rewards of all the hard work. Feedback about the experience of solving the Mobile Escape Room was extremely positive!

Engagement from the campers throughout the week was amazing. Breaks needed to be scheduled for the campers because they just wanted to keep working on the project. This is shown through a note-able quote from on of the campers: “This was the first camp I have been at where other campers did not pull out their phones at all during the week. Everyone was so engaged!”

We have two more weeks of camp with discoverE this summer. We at Mobile Escape cannot wait to see what amazing creations are yet to come!