The other guides in this series each start with an age. A family does not have one. Around the table on a holiday afternoon there might be a six year old, an eleven year old, a teenager who would rather be somewhere else, two parents and a grandparent, and they are all supposed to play the same game.
It goes wrong in a predictable way. The fastest solver in the room, often a parent, solves everything. The youngest becomes a spectator. The teenager decides in the first five minutes that it is for little kids. Here is how to build it so every age has something only they can do.
Give every puzzle an owner
Most home escape rooms are built from puzzles and then handed to a group. A family game works the other way around: start from the people, and build one puzzle for each of them.
- The youngest gets the finding. Searching needs no reading, and it rewards the smallest person in the room, who fits under the bed and notices things at knee height.
- The middle children get the codes. A cipher wheel or a picture alphabet, pitched like the guide for 9 and 10 year olds.
- The teenager gets the hardest thing in the room. Or better, make the teenager the Escape Master. The one most likely to sulk is usually the one who most enjoys being in charge of the ending.
- The grandparents get the memory. More on that below, because it is the best puzzle in the game.
- The parents get to explain nothing. Their job is to be the last people anybody asks.
The one rule for grown-ups
Adults can advise, but only children touch the puzzles. An adult can read a clue out loud when asked, and can point, but the hands on the lock, the pen on the cipher and the finger on the map belong to the children.
It sounds like a rule for the children's sake, and it is, but it also makes the game better for the adults. Watching a seven year old work out something you saw straight away is more fun than solving it yourself, and the only way to find that out is to keep your hands behind your back.
Print the same puzzle two ways
When everybody has to solve one puzzle together, print it twice: a picture version and a word version, both leading to the same answer. The six year old matches pictures, the ten year old reads, and they reach the same code from different directions. When they check each other's answer, the youngest is proving the oldest right, which is a rare and excellent feeling at six.
Pair across the ages
Put the oldest child with the youngest. The older one reads, the younger one searches, and neither can finish without the other. It stops the older children forming a team of their own, and it gives the youngest a partner who will actually wait for them.
A clue only this family can solve
In any other escape room, a puzzle that needs outside knowledge is a mistake: players should find everything they need in the room. A family game is the exception, and this is the best puzzle you will write for it.
The code to the last box is the year the grandparents married, the house number of the first family home, or the name of the first family dog on a word lock. The children cannot know it, so they have to go and ask, and the grandparents, who have been sitting politely at the edge of the game, suddenly hold the answer. Nearly every time, the answer comes with a story.
When, and for how long
Family games suit the days when everybody is already in the house: Thanksgiving, a long holiday afternoon, a reunion, a birthday with the grandparents over. The best slot is straight after the big meal, when nobody wants to go far and the youngest are starting to get restless.
Thirty to forty-five minutes: long enough for every owner to have their moment, and short enough that the youngest is still with you at the end. Four to eight players make one team. Past eight, split into two teams, as in How to Throw an Escape Room Birthday Party at Home.
Themes that work from five to seventy-five
- A spy mission. Every age likes being trusted with a secret, and codes scale from pictures to ciphers.
- A treasure hunt. The youngest searches, the oldest reads the map.
- A mystery with something missing. The family's own things make the best evidence. Who took the remote?
- Not horror. A game that frightens the six year old is over for everybody. Halloween Escape Room Ideas has a version that stays silly for the youngest.
Each age has its own guide, if you want more for any one of them: six year olds, seven and eight, nine and ten, tweens and teenagers.
Spy Mission suits a mixed group: up to eight players, twenty to thirty minutes, codes for the readers and a dead drop for the searchers. It is written for eight and up, so pair a younger child with an older partner, as above.
