How to Beat an Escape Room: Six Strategies & Six Things to Avoid

Want to know how to beat an escape room? How to give your family a higher chance of bringing home the gold?

The secret to achieving the ultimate goal is outlined in this article.

Keep reading to discover six winning strategies and six things to avoid.

Winning Strategies for Escape Rooms

There are six things to remember that will lead you to victory in an escape room.

1. Listen to the Rules

Before you head into your escape room, your gamemaster will read you the rules for the game.

Many of these rules are common sense. For example, you shouldn’t mess with electrical wires or outlets, and it’s not a good idea to try and dismantle the room.

Some rules, however, are specific to the escape room you’re playing.

For example, some escape rooms require you to move furniture, but if you hear a rule that says not to move anything large and heavy, then your escape room cannot be solved by moving furniture.

2. Consider the Room’s Theme

One of the best ways to uncover clues is to remember the theme of the game.

For example, if the room is based on the book Alice in Wonderland, you’re likely to find references to different characters and plot points from the original Alice in Wonderland story. There are plenty of potential clues from the story, like the growing and shrinking foods, the suits of cards, and the White Rabbit’s role in leading the way for Alice.

3. Stay Organized

Whenever you find a clue, a key, or a piece of a puzzle, you’ll want to put it in an easily accessible section of the room.

Many teams choose to place items in the center of the room. If you find a physical key, you should create a space exclusively for keys. If you’re trying to find pieces of a torn-up note, you should put together the note pieces as you find them.

By keeping track of all the clues and keys, you’ll be more prepared to solve the puzzles.

4. Assign Team Members to Different Tasks

In an escape room, every member of your team should have a different specialty.

There are a number of escape room roles, and making sure you fill the four main roles is crucial. Those roles should be assigned before you even get inside the room.

Once you start playing, you should take the initiative in assigning specific tasks to your team members. You may direct someone to start rifling through books, or tell another person to try and solve a jigsaw puzzle.

5. Keep an Eye on the Time

Every escape room has a time limit.

If you want to win your escape room, it’s important that you have an idea of how much time you have left. That way, you can tell if you’re moving too slowly.

This is also good for getting a boost of adrenaline. If you know that you’re five or six minutes from the end, you’re more likely to zoom through that last puzzle!

6. Communicate with Your Team

Communication is always crucial, but it’s especially important in escape rooms.

If you don’t communicate with your team, you won’t know who’s solved a puzzle, who’s found a key, or who’s looked through a pile of papers already. Someone else might spend a few minutes doing the same thing another team member just did, and that’s just wasting time.

A good strategy is to have team members yell out what they’re doing and what they’ve found, so that way everyone hears it at once.

What Shouldn’t My Family Do to Beat an Escape Room?

1. Be Afraid to Ask for Help from the Gamemaster

The gamemaster is here to help you win, and you should take full advantage of that.

Your gamemaster will let you know how clues work for your specific game. You may get only a certain number of clues, or using a clue may take a few minutes off your time.

If it’s been ten minutes and you haven’t found anything for the next puzzle, talk to your teammates and decide whether you want to use a hint from the gamemaster.

2. Leave Anyone Standing Around

If someone’s just standing around, not doing anything, there’s a problem.

Everyone should always be involved in the escape room. Even if it seems like one of your team members doesn’t have anything to do, you can always find something.

For example, you can assign them to check all of the paintings in the room or look underneath desks for clues. No matter how insignificant it may seem, it could lead to an answer.

Draw on your knowledge of common escape room tricks to get all of your family members in the game.

3. Refuse to Listen to Team Members’ Ideas

Even if you think a team member’s idea is silly, you should always listen to what they’re saying.

Everyone in your family has different perspectives, and that means they’re all going to come up with creative ways to solve puzzles.

It can be tempting to brush off silly-sounding ideas, especially if they come from younger members of the family, but if you’re stuck on a puzzle, what’s the harm?

When you acknowledge ideas and strategies your team members come up with, they’ll be happier with the experience, even if you don’t win.

4. Toss Items the First Time You Use Them

Don’t assume that you’ll only use an item once.

It’s true that in many escape rooms, your key or cipher will only be used on one lock, and the other locks will be different.

However, that’s not a universal truth. Once you’ve used an item, set it aside, but don’t forget about it. If you’re stuck on the next puzzle, try revisiting that item and seeing if it can help in any way.

Even if you don’t directly use a previous solution, it might give you some insight into the room. That’s invaluable information either way.

5. Focus Exclusively on One Puzzle

Every escape room relies on multiple puzzles, so you need to focus on solving all of them (not just one).

If the whole family is crowded around one particular puzzle, that means nothing else is being investigated, and that means you’ll have a harder time finding solutions.

When you approach the puzzles in a linear fashion, it gets time-consuming: five minutes to solve the first puzzle, then five minutes to solve the second, and so on.

However, if each member of your six-person team solves their own five-minute puzzle, the first six puzzles would be solved within five minutes!

If a puzzle solver needs an extra hand, don’t be afraid to add that extra manpower. But generally, you’ll want to give each person their own duty.

6. Stop Communicating with Your Team

This point always bears repeating.

Your team is your lifeline, and that means you need to be communicating at all times.

Yell out puzzle pieces you’ve found, ask for help if you’re stumped, and share information if you think you have a solution.

After all, you’re acting as a team! Rely on your family members to help you with the escape room, and you’ll have a much higher chance of reaching victory.

Communication is one of the most important parts of solving an escape room, so don’t skimp on it.

Why 60out?

Now that you know how to beat an escape room, you’re probably excited to find an escape room in LA that your family will love.

At 60out, you can choose from multiple difficulties, different genres, variable pricing, and a range of time slots, so you can find the perfect room for your family.

Don’t wait — book your reservation online today!

Read more:

• Are Escape Rooms Hard? Picking the Right Difficulty Level for Your Team — Read about the challenges you might find in escape rooms and the different difficulty levels.
• Top 5 Escape Room Tips for Beginner Escape Artists — Whether you’re just starting out or you want to introduce someone to escape rooms, read this guide for tips.