1) Challenge 1 = the escape game created by teachers.

Knowing that the final task was to have students create their own escape game, it was important for them to have the opportunity to experience an escape room first and see how an escape game is designed and managed...

So teachers created an escape game for students, the topic was pollution and the scenario was built around Pollutor, an an evil 20 character who feeds on pollution, waste and CO2 emissions and who has decided to target Europeans teenagers.

Three locked boxes were scattered in the room. Students were divided in 3 groups Each box was clearly labelled (waste / air pollution / digital pollution), so were the clues so that students could share the work and be in charge of opening one box. In each box they also found clues which were necessary for the final common puzzle: a chemistry experiment, the colours of the solutions helped them find the final password to escape the room. You will find examples of the activites below:

A countdown created for the game was displayed in the room, it used pictures from the escape rooms in the 3 countries gradually being filled up with rubbish and the stressful music created a tense atmosphere.

Even if students couldn't play at the same time in the 3 countries, we estimated the escape time for each team as we made sure in each team they didn't open the same box (one box per country).The "Total Play Time" is the sum of all duration for all three boxes. The "Estimated International Escape Time" is the final estimated escape time for each team (including Green Box and key to open the escape room). Keep in mind that time intervals opening boxes overlap.

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2) Challenge 2 = the escape game created by students

Each team was in charge of creating one puzzle. The topic of the game was sustainable development so students had to choose one topic in a given list (to avoid repetitions) but were then free to choose the type of puzzles and activities they wanted to create.

This enabled them to be creative and autonomous.

They could either reuse some of the tools they had discovered in challenge 1,  or use some of the advise they received from the professionals of escape rooms

Most of the teams chose to have boxes with real padlocks and the puzzles and tools used were varied: morse code, mirror reading, QR code, quiz, jigsaw puzzle, containers, hidden messages, coded messages, UV lamp etc...

They learnt to share tasks and could help each other according to their skills and talents. They also had to make compromises as they had to make a decision together to create one team puzzle.

As they also had to prepare all the material and the room for the "test", it forced them to improve their organisational skills. They become more responsible too.

When testing the room, we made sure, each team was not in charge of opening their own box / solving their own puzzle. And as they had no idea what the final puzzle was about, there was still a part of mystery for them. So even if there wasn't the same surprise effect as for challenge 1, they really liked it. It was also rewarding for them to to see their classmates try their own puzzles.

It would have been great to be able to see what could be improved before having the game played on a larger scale by other classes in each partner school... But the Covid-19 pandemic made it impossible, and we had to cancel our final plans.