Home escape room parties are different than the professional game rooms that you pay to play. Unless you are willing to spend significant sums of money to develop or purchase custom locks, boxes, and ciphers for your game, it is much more cost effective to utilize commercially available products as your game elements. You are also able to reuse them for future games that are not in the same theme. After several years of hosting escape room parties for our friends, we have found some supplies that we found to be useful.
Locks are readily available from simple keyed and 3 digit locks (most common) to more specialty locks, such as 4 & 5 digit locks, letter locks, and even specialized locks (ex. RFID).
I have included a few recommendations on locks below that we have used with success for our games.
*I do not receive compensation for these reviews. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own.
Locks
For our escape room parties (and kits), we utilized a variety of keyed, digit, and letter lock solutions. This gave a more varied solution from lock to lock to keep the game more dynamic.
We also developed a conversion card to convert the longer (4 & 5 digit & letter) solutions into a 3 digit lock solution, as the 3 digit locks are more readily available and often less expensive.
I have included a few recommendations on locks below that we have used with success for our games.
Lockable Boxes & Bags
In order for something to be locked away, it needs to be enclosed in a lockable container. This can be as small as a bag or as large as a room.
For the purpose of home escape room games, you can get creative with things you already own. Look for a container that has two holes that the shank of the lock can loop through, such as a toolbox, pencil/ tool pouches, etc.
If you are looking to purchase lockable items for your game, I have included a few recommendations below!
Lockable Bags & Hasps
Lockable Bags
When looking for lockable bags, you need a zipper with a hole on the end of the zipper pull that is large enough for the lock to slip through and a fabric loop on the end of the bag.
Pencil pouches and tool bags are commonly designed with these features.
The down side to lockable bags is that players can ‘cheat’ and bend the bag to get the zipper open. However, as long as you are moderating the game, you can prevent these cheats. It is, by far, the most affordable way to lock up the clues and they store easier than boxes after the game.
Lockable Hasps
If you have a toolbox, most often they are already set up to be lockable. Money boxes are also lockable, but these may have a key rather than a combination lock. Many craft stores carry affordable unfinished wood boxes for crafts. These are great to decorate for your theme (wizard supplies, etc.) However, most don’t have a lockable hasp. You may purchase a lockable hasp and retrofit them onto these boxes to be usable for your escape room.
I have included links to options for both lockable bags and hasps below. One thing to note: the lock needs to have a small shank for many hasps. The three and four digit locks noted above were chosen for this reason – they have smaller shanks that more readily fit into common hasps.
Lockable Boxes & Bags
If you are looking for a box with a built-in lock, there are many lock boxes available online. This allows you to not purchase a separate box and lock, however you will be ‘locked in’ (pun intended) to using the type of lock the box utilizes. For example, if you purchase a 3 digit number lock box, you will not be able use it for a puzzle that solves for a 5 letter code.
With our escape room games, we designed a ‘conversion card’ that allows you to translate any 4 or 5 digit or letter solution into a 3 number solution. As the vast majority of combination lock boxes available are 3 number locks, this allowed the use of lock boxes we already owned to be used for a variety of puzzle solves that weren’t just 3 digit solves.
Lockable book boxes appear to be a book, but are actually a lockable box once opened. They can come as a keyed lock or a tumbler lock. While there are many ‘cover’ options available for purchase, you can also design your own dust cover or find book cover designs online as a themed option to cover the standard options available.
For our wizard escape room parties, we found magical book covers online and designed our own covers to create a magical book collection. While the majority of books were thrifted titles up-cycled into magical books, the book lockbox was hidden within the collection.
I have included links to a recommended lockable box and a book box below.
