Nov 21 | Escape Rooms Australia e-Magazine

With a lot of Australia just coming out of lockdown and getting ready to gearing up for Christmas I’m sure everyone will be pretty busy.

What a great opportunity to support the local Escape Room businesses with booking an event to catch up with friends or family for Christmas. Organise a team function that is fun and exciting. Or just purchase Gift Vouchers to give as Christmas presents.

I’m sure every escape room would love your support, especially those that have been closed for the past 3 months.

We are always open to feedback to help improve this magazine feel free to email us at:

era@eludegames.com.au

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In the deepest, darkest woods of North America, alleged sightings of Bigfoot are on the rise. The mysterious creature is only ever glimpsed at night, making this famously elusive beast hard to find – and even harder to capture!

You’ve joined a team of avid cryptozoologists to examine the area for clues that might lead you to the monster’s lair. A nearby cabin has been set up by C.H.A.S.E.R (the Cryptozoology Hunters Acquiring Sasquatch Evidence Regiment) to help you in your search.

Maybe… just maybe, you’ll piece the mystery together and catch Bigfoot unawares!

Dawn is closing in. With only 1 hour until the sun rises, will you find the Sasquatch before your time runs out? Or will the evasive creature simply disappear into the wilderness, like it has so many times before?

Difficulty: 8/10

Time: 60 minutes

Ages: 7+

Recommended Players: 2-6

Special Features: An immersive adventure suitable for all ages with a duplicate room available for larger groups to play.

Book Mindshift – Adelaide

Congratulations to our winners.

Sarah & Jillian

Check your emails on how to claim your prize.

Make someone’s day, send them a unique gift this Christmas?

Mystery Mail is a unique puzzle pack that will get posted to your selected recipient.

The fun part is that until they solve all the puzzles, they will not know who sent it to them.

FREE postage within Australia, select international postage for overseas shipping.

Pre-Order and select your preferred postage date.

We can even upload an electronic voucher to the final page.

ORDER MYSTERY MAIL

How I Learned the Trick

What could be a better debut to my role as Games Master than a group of 12 year old boys? Probably not much, so hang onto your suggestions for another day.

While you and I might justifiably expect chaos, roughhousing and boundless energy, they were quite well behaved when set against the puzzles they could engage in both mentally and physically.
The group were in our linear Escape Room, which means that with seven searchers uncovering every clue, my primary task was in bringing them back to the current puzzle to be solved in order.
As a former child myself, I really identified with their exuberance in having the directed play of figuring out the puzzle solutions with their friends; inquiry, teamwork and mental stimulation (along with not having to clean up afterwards) kept these guys moving and rejoicing every time they cracked a code.
A subtle hint here, a suggestive point there, a simple don’t-touch-that-it’s-a-fire-extinguisher there. Get through the last door and everyone is a champion!

One thing here that I have learned with younger groups is that they are not too worried about a debrief afterwards, and not all that concerned with having someone in the room to nudge them along towards solving a puzzle; their whole enjoyment is guaranteed when they open that final door and escape. There would be tougher tests than this to judge my progress on.

What then makes a Games Master I figuratively hear you ask?
As with any customer service role, you really need to keep the focus on whoever comes through that door.
Before you push them through a different door and lock it behind them for an hour.

The main parts:

Putting a big smile on your face. And then covering that smile with a mask. (Dear future reader in 2025: hopefully this is a distant memory)
Pay attention. Add some personal connections to the debrief by noting what individual players have done, and bring it up as an amusement (if funny) or to stoke an ego (if impressive). Giving the team members acknowledgement for the roles they played will leave them with a positive feeling.
Getting a feel of the experience level of a group: Have they done any rooms before, or are they all total rookies? Have they been dragged along by just one experienced player? Did they mean to actually go to the train museum down the road and just made the wrong turn?

This last bit is key to knowing how much help would be needed, the very core of the role of Games Master, and is something I will go into more next time!

Here’s a code that will put a spot of colour into your Escape Room experience!
The Colour Dot cipher is a way to substitute letters of the alphabet for splashes of colour, via numbers used in easy sums that are then swapped out.
It might not be a code that you have encountered before, but it is definitely one that will brighten up any puzzle.

Get out your crayons!
For this we don’t actually want your full set of Derwents, with just nine colours recommended.
We need to choose some that are distinct enough from each other so as not to be muddled (having a unique colour for each of our 26 letters would be a bit too fiddly).
Today, we will go with these nine colours and give them number values from 1 to 9.

Along with this we will need a key that just reminds everyone of the alphabet and the number order that goes with it.

A Pot of Code at the end of the Rainbow
Through the magic of basic mathematics, we can can swap out the letters in our secret message for singular or multiple coloured dots based on reaching the sum total that you need.
With our code element choices above, A will always be a singular dark blue dot, but B could be two dark blue dots or a singular orange one. Likewise, Z will need to be a combination of the higher value dots, but beyond these restrictions your combinations can be varied, within the same message or even the same word.

Reversing the Rainbow
To go backwards and decrypt a dot communication, take the group of dots and determine the numbers their sum indicates. This number will give you your letter.

The beauty of this cipher is that as it uses simple colours, all your puzzle maker needs to do is keep the key consistent.
Take a look around your escape room for series of colourful interludes, as these props could be just what you need to decode for the next clue.
Tiles, carefully arranged pencils, pots, eyeballs (!), toy cars, building blocks, embroidery hoops, candles, even just simple stickers.
As always, the presence of this kind of code is not something you need to memorise – the key will be somewhere in your Escape Room! Don’t just assume you can guess it, they might be really tricky and have mixed up the alphabet (e.g. A=15, B=24, etc)
This might not appeal to your chromatically challenged players, but a team functions best when its members help each other out anyway!

If you prefer to use even fewer colours, that is also fine. We’ve put nine in so we can get up to Z with just three dots. If you want to use 26 of the same coloured marbles to spell out Z that’s fine, but we have chosen to make it a bit quicker by using more colours. Also ink is expensive!

Look for this in bright, colourful Escape Rooms, or use it yourself when making puzzles for friends. (note: it’s a great way to keep young puzzle-solvers busy on those days at home)

The Dine & Discover Vouchers have been extended to June 2022

GREAT NEWS is that everyone over 18 in NSW will be receiving another Discover voucher in December which you can redeem at your local escape room company.

Dubbo Escape Rooms
Elude Escape Rooms
Escape Hunt Sydney
Escape Rooms Albury
Escape Rooms Central Coast
Labyrinth Escape Rooms
Mission Escape
Narrow Escape Rooms
Next Level Escape
Parapark Sydney
Room Eight Escape Rooms
Scram Escape Rooms
Social Escape Rooms Sydney
The Cipher Room

Below is a link to the business finder to see who is registered to accept the vouchers.

Business Finder

Create an Escape Room Meme using one of the pictures below.

Screen shot the image, add your text and email to us at era@eludegames.com.au

I would say this game is up there with the more cleverly and creatively designed Escape Room Board Games that I have encountered. It blends both the standard mind-puzzle based escape room board games with a jigsaw puzzle. Rather than apply the methods that some games tend to use, including dividing the progression made throughout the game by having the more difficult, main puzzles separated by smaller easier puzzles, the game instead uses jigsaw puzzles that are important elements in the overall game and its completion.

The inclusion of the jigsaw puzzles actually made it increasingly more enjoyable. I personally tend to struggle to stay consistently concentrated and consumed by board games, but I was quite captivated in this particular game (2-3 hours) because the puzzles were positively challenging. I remained motivated with anticipation to unravel the storyline, which can often lack amusement and comparability to the puzzles and themes.

The different settings you encounter made the game remain more engaging for a longer period to finish this game. The use of a jigsaw puzzle is is a relatively rare and fresh addition to escape room board games, especially considering jigsaw’s consistent and abundant popularity.

Even though most of us would associate the word puzzle with jigsaw, surprisingly another great feature of this game is you were quite easily swept up in the story and you would be doing the puzzles because they were enjoyable, but you are also anticipating what is going to happen next.

All the puzzles related directly to the theming and the story of what was being told and the inclusion of the jigsaw led it to be much more engaging and creatively interesting and would be still enjoyable and playable with up to 4 players.

Jason