Whether you’re looking to organize a unique team-building event or just want to spice up your next gathering, designing your own escape room allows you to tailor the experience to your group’s preferences and objectives. From creating a storyline and crafting puzzles to setting up the space and keeping everyone engaged, a DIY escape room can be a lot of work but also a lot of fun.Â
What Happens in an Escape Room Team-Building Activity?
In an escape room team-building activity, participants are usually divided into small groups and placed in a themed room filled with puzzles and challenges. The main objective is for the team to work together, solve clues, and complete the room's objective—often escaping from it—within a set time limit, typically 60 to 90 minutes. Throughout the activity, communication and collaboration are key as each team member may have a different perspective on solving the puzzles, making it a great way to build teamwork and highlight problem-solving skills under pressure.
The experience tends to foster camaraderie as everyone pools their strengths to tackle various challenges, whether it’s decoding a cipher, finding hidden objects, or piecing together a storyline. It’s not just about individual problem-solving abilities but also about sharing ideas and supporting one another in a dynamic, often high-pressure environment. The excitement and adrenaline of racing against the clock create an engaging and memorable bonding experience for the whole group.
How Do Virtual Escape Rooms Work?
Virtual escape rooms are an exciting way to bring the classic escape room experience into the digital world. Participants join the game through a video conferencing platform, where a host guides them through the scenario. The team is presented with a series of puzzles, riddles, and challenges, just like in a physical escape room, but instead of manipulating physical objects, they explore digital clues and solve problems on-screen. Players communicate through video chat to share their ideas and insights, making collaboration and communication just as important as in-person experiences.
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The game often involves different interactive elements such as clickable objects, digital locks, and codes that must be deciphered. Players might need to navigate through virtual rooms or websites, search for hidden information, or complete mini-games. While the setting may be virtual, the thrill of solving puzzles together and racing against the clock remains the same. Virtual escape rooms are a great option for remote teams or friends looking to have some fun together from different locations.
Are Escape Rooms a Good Team-Building Activity?
Escape rooms are definitely a fun and effective team-building activity! They’re designed to challenge participants to think creatively and work together under pressure, which makes them ideal for building teamwork and communication skills. As you try to solve puzzles, find hidden clues, and unlock different stages of the room, everyone needs to pitch in with their own ideas and strengths. It’s a chance for quieter team members to step up and for the whole group to see each other in a different light. Plus, with everyone focused on a shared goal—escaping within the time limit—it’s an engaging way to foster collaboration.
What makes escape rooms particularly good for team building is the way they break down barriers and encourage people to communicate openly. It’s not uncommon for teams to leave the room feeling more connected, having shared laughs and maybe a few frustrations along the way! The experience offers a blend of problem-solving, leadership, and listening, all wrapped up in a fun and immersive environment. So, whether it’s a corporate team, a sports group, or just friends looking to improve their dynamics, escape rooms are a great way to bring people closer together.
How to Create Your Own Escape Room for Team Building
It is possible to create your own DIY escape room for your team. If you are creative and organized, you can write a compelling story, gather props, and design puzzles and games to challenge your group. If your team is located in different places, you can hold the escape room activity on a video conferencing platform like Zoom or Google Meet.
Successful escape rooms rely on challenging puzzles and games, but the backbone of an escape room is a good story. You will need to craft a narrative that pulls your team in and makes them want to get to the bottom of the mystery. A compelling tale can make the group feel like they are immersed in the story and working together.
As you create the story, make a list of items you will need. Most DIY escape rooms rely on locked boxes or sealed envelopes to ensure that clues are revealed in the correct order. Small suitcases and backpacks are another option. Depending on the details of the story, you can also add props or costumes.
In addition to a great story and useful props, you will need to set up challenging but not impossible puzzles. Some of the common types of puzzles are hidden objects, combinations hidden in a section of text, connect the dots, and even invisible ink. Answering trivia questions is another popular activity. Be sure to vary the types of challenges to keep the activity interesting.
When you run your own escape room, you also need to set up the space before the group gets there and keep everyone on task throughout the activity. A DIY escape room can be a lot of work but also very rewarding. If this sounds like too much, you have many options for escape room team building activities to save yourself the effort.
Best Escape Rooms for Team Building
NYC: Escape Room—Only Murders in the Building
Join Oliver, Charles, and Mabel in a high-stakes adventure to save their movie! The film reel has vanished, and they need your detective skills to uncover hidden clues and solve puzzles on a thrilling NYC escape room set. Can you help them find the missing reel before it's too late? Desperate to find the missing reel, the trio—Oliver, Charles, and Mabel—need your help. Search through the intricately designed movie set, uncover hidden clues, and solve puzzles to track down the missing film reel. Your keen observation and detective skills are essential to saving the movie!
Relive the nostalgia of school days in the Playground escape room, where you'll need to complete quirky assignments to earn your summer break. Perfect for first-timers and seasoned players alike, this 60-minute adventure challenges your teamwork and problem-solving skills in a fun, light-hearted setting. Can your group ace the tasks before the final bell rings? Light-hearted, nostalgic, and playful, Playground is a favorite of both first-timers and enthusiasts. Your game will start in a classroom where you’ll have to finish all of your assignments before the end of the day, or you can forget about summer break. And these assignments are unlike anything you actually encountered in school. Playground was designed for up to 12 players and is an epic team-building experience. Your group will work together to escape the room, completing challenging puzzles & brushing up on their teamwork, collaboration, and analytical skills!
Chicago: Escape Room—Prison Break
Embark on the ultimate challenge in Prison Break, our toughest escape room yet! Split into separate prison cells, your team must navigate a 1950s-style prison and outwit the guards to reach the warden’s office. Can you successfully escape in just 60 minutes, or will you face a lifetime behind bars in this hyper-realistic environment? Many consider Prison Break our most difficult escape room. Players are split into two different prison cells and must work together to get out of a 1950s-style prison. A successful escape will include a sneaky trip to the warden’s office. An unsuccessful escape will land you in prison forever. Yes, those are real prison toilets….what can we say? We are obsessed with creating realistic environments.
Chicago: Escape Room—Train Through Time!
Embark on a thrilling journey through time with your team in an immersive escape room experience that challenges your collaboration and problem-solving skills. Navigate through different eras, from the Jurassic to Medieval, to save the future together! Time travel just became a reality in this digitally-interactive escape room adventure. As part of the Time Crisis Management team, you’re tasked with addressing life-threatening issues, no matter what decade they happen in. You can easily hop between centuries, from the Jurassic to Medieval and everything in between, with just one ticket swipe on Timeliner, the time-traveling train. Now, the fate of reality is in your hands — it’s up to you to restore the past and save the future. And you’ll have to hurry! All it takes is one mistake in the past for the entire future to fall apart.
Are you brave enough to dive into the depths of the ocean to investigate an abandoned laboratory? Well, you’ll have to be in this escape room! The brilliant researcher, Dr. Humphreys, has gone missing and there have been rumors of mysterious experiments since his disappearance. It’s up to you to navigate your submarine to the lab, decipher Humphreys’ research, and discover what he’s been hiding deep in the ocean—just beware, you're not alone in these waters. Can your team solve the puzzles and escape the underwater lab in 60 minutes?Â
The 1800s California gold rush was a time when just about anyone could get lucky with a fortune. No one knew this better than your recently deceased relative, Clyde Hamilton. Though he’s since passed, the prospector left behind quite a pretty penny in gold. As his surviving next of kin, he’s offered you a chance to claim the gold fortune as an inheritance for yourself…if you can find it! You’ve only got 60 minutes to get into Clyde’s cabin and take the gold stash before news of the fortune reaches other greedy ears in town. Step back in time to the 1800s California gold rush and race against the clock to uncover your prospector relative's hidden fortune. Solve challenging puzzles and outwit rival treasure hunters in a thrilling 60-minute escape room adventure. Will your teamwork and wits be enough to claim the gold before others catch wind of your quest?
Houston: Escape Room—The Heist (CityCentre)
Attn. Agent, your mission should you choose to accept it: pull off the ultimate museum heist. A priceless Monet painting has recently gone missing from the Barclay Museum of Historical Art. We have reason to believe it’s been nabbed by the museum’s curator, Vincent Hahn. Your mission — slip through the museum galleries undetected, break into Hahn’s office, recover the painting, and high-tail it out of there before he returns! Will your team outwit the security systems and pull off the perfect crime, or will you be caught red-handed?
Houston: Escape Room—Cosmic Crisis (The Galleria)
Your humble spaceship is blindsided by a ferocious and hungry black hole. If it’s not stopped within the hour, the entire solar system will be consumed! Your only hope is a nearby space station harboring antimatter to blow the black hole (and everything around it) to smithereens! Feed the antimatter to the black hole to end its rampage and save the solar system! Can you stop a ravenous black hole from devouring the solar system in just 60 minutes? Dive into the thrilling "Cosmic Crisis" escape room, where you'll race against time to feed antimatter to the black hole and save the universe! Book now for an unforgettable, out-of-this-world adventure.
Join your mini team and try to escape the room in just one hour while taking a nostalgic trip back to the '90s. In this escape game experience, you'll become campers at a throwback camp that celebrates the era of Nickelodeon, Blockbuster nights, and the unmistakable sound of a dial-up modem. Perfect for anyone who remembers rewinding VHS tapes or who loved the jingle of Teen Spirit, this escape room captures the essence of the decade. Upon arrival, campers will get a taste of camp history and practice using beeper codes before settling in for a classic VHS movie night. But beware—the TVs in your bunks might just transport you back to the '90s, giving you only a limited time to escape. Work together to solve puzzles that capture the spirit of a pre-Google world, crack the codes, and make it back before the '90s are over once again!
Virtual Escape Room: Murder Mystery
Gather your team to solve a crime by completing puzzles and riddles in this exciting murder mystery experience. As trainees at the CHPD (CourseHorse Puzzle Detectives), you and your team will tackle the kinds of cases that only the most cunning criminals concoct to challenge solution-oriented enforcers. Are you ready to outsmart a murderer who taunts investigators with cleverly hidden clues? Your training begins with a series of tests to assess your skills, but with the CHPD busier than ever, you’ll soon be thrown into the deep end. A murder at a high school reunion—where the star quarterback is discovered dead in the gymnasium—calls for immediate action. Among the frightened attendees lurks the culprit, leaving a trail of puzzles and clues as a challenge. Your team must decipher these riddles and crack the codes before the killer strikes again. Can you rise to the occasion and bring the criminal to justice?