We celebrated Captain Melon‘s birthday today with a game of Breakout. A breakout room is a game wherein players are locked inside a room and they need to find/solve a series of clues to locate the key that will set them free. It’s a timed game, set at about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the difficulty. We have tried both Mystery Manila and Lost before and it was always an exciting experience.

Because we miss it dearly, I decided to make one here at home. This time, I was the game master and I have to be the one to think of the clues and where to put them.

Clues

As it’s meant to be both educational and fun, I used questions from different subjects as the clues. There were questions on Math, Geography, World History, and Science.

Clues were rolled up and inserted into cut-up straws.

These were then taped onto where the answer is. These were very small so if you’re not really looking, you’re bound to miss it.

Here’s another clue hidden underneath the heart once they figure out that the heart is the one that sends blood to the body parts.

Coin banks like these are a great place to hide clues too! Plus, you can put a combination lock on it, the combination of which, can be an answer to a Math problem that they have to solve.

Locking the Door

We don’t really have a door that I can lock from the outside so I used our mini house instead. I blocked the door with it and it does happen to have a hasp where I can put a lock on.

The act of opening a lock to get free is a vital part of the gameplay so I didn’t want it left out, even if it’s just a lock to a tiny door.

First Clue

As a starting point, the first clue was left in plain sight. As I didn’t have a working compass, I had to tape this compass rose to give them a reference point as two of the clues were related to direction. Clue number 1 was actually the coordinate B2.

And here’s where they have to match the coordinate to. Do you see the next clue? 🙂

Here are the detectives hard at work. There were a total of 9 clues that they had to go through, the last of which will open the box where the key was hidden.

Why It’s Great

The experience was so fun that the boys were clamoring for more when they finished it.

• Fun ✔
• Collaboration ✔
• Educational ✔
• Creative thinking ✔
• Sense of Accomplishment ✔

Here’s that sense of accomplishment in action. 🙂

I made this Yakult-bottle trophy and Mystery Solved sign for their photo op after. Can you tell what we’ve been snacking on?? Haha!

Yey!

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as we did. Anyway, I’m back to the drawing board to come up with a harder room for them to breakout of. Till next time! 🙂