The Game is Afoot!

Having never played an escape room before, I can't begin to imagine why thought planning one would be a good idea. But I needed some new premise for my 2 week STEAM camp, and why not?

Could be fun.

On our game structure:

Our theme for camp was a "spy" story and we focused on spy science. Most escape rooms have time-oriented goals which create a lot of the intensity and excitement. Working with younger students (ages 8-12), we decided it was better to have the story evolve slowly, sometimes taking a back seat to other activities. Our overall structure was more similar to traditional alternate-reality gaming.

This worked out super well for our students; we were able to seamlessly step back when puzzles became to frustrating, we could adapt and change the story based on the choices of our students, and students were continuously "playing the game", even when we had no game pieces in play. They were looking critically at every piece of information we gave them, every activity we did, and they were taking notes without prompting.

We made a point to establish early on that the answers to their next puzzle might be hidden in something we showed them that afternoon, or in something we showed them a week ago. So many students were desperate for time to take notes in case the information became valuable later. Educator WIN!

More later.....