For all of these worksheets, I suggest leaving the "fill in the blank" lines out. Many notes might be easier to make in a less-structured way, and I suspect few will fit that particular layout.

Lots of good tips in this section!

Most escape room hosts have pre-game warning lists they have built from this experience, many of which are quite amusing, including items such as "nothing is hidden in the ceiling" and "nothing in the room is intended to be eaten or tasted"

Typo: should be "nothing"

And is also hard to read for many younger players who have not all been taught cursive in school.

Typo: should be "its"

This is a very important safety tip, thank you for including it!

Grammar: I would suggest "If the password is correct, a light will turn on"

Grammar: should be "components" or "a mechanical Arduino component"

Grammar: should be "the computer"

Grammar: should be "building an"

Grammar: should be "of the"

Grammar: should be "build the entire"

Grammar: should be "of an"

Grammar: remove "will", it is not needed here.

Grammar: should be "anywhere in your space, pre-loaded with a special app or 360 environment, and enrich"

Grammar: should be "of"

I would remove this phrase, it sounds odd here.

Typo: should be "a particular"

Grammar: should be "the length"

Typo: should be "a fun"

Typo: should be "create a"

Grammar: should be "on a"

Typo: should be "have a"

Typo, should be "Another"

Grammar: should be "when they find a video projector and connect it, the projector can display anything you want"

Typo: should be "leave an"

Typo: should be "create"

Typo: should be "match"

Typo: should be "find a"

Grammar: should be "In almost any classroom or office"

Grammar: "or are designing in a place with no windows"

Grammar: should be "one of the most"

Grammar: should be "use in an"

Grammar: should be "you can have a simple poster"

Two things: 1) Grammar, this should be "an infinity table" 2) What is an infinity table? That sounds really cool!

Grammar: should be "participants who tend to overthink"

I'm not sure what this phrase means. Is the intent to say you have many options?

Grammar: should be "look at a bright lamp and get a new code"

Not an English word, perhaps "surprise elements"?

Grammar: should be "If you use dark film" (or perhaps "tinted film")

I think this is unclear as written, I'd suggest "But be careful to limit items which are not related to game flow,otherwise participants may get confused and lost in information that is not part of the game's puzzles or narrative"

Current best-practice for safety in escape rooms is to never actually lock the exit doors. For this reason, I'd discourage using this "trick" in designs, because the doors shouldn't really be locked in the first place.

Typo: should be "about the"

Typos/grammar: should be "If you are building a budget version of an escape game"

Typo: should be "the actual"

Typo: should be "and finishing"

Typo: should be "mark"

Typo: should be "architect's"

What is the distinction you make between these two things?

https://en.lockee.fr/ lets you create customized digital locks of various types, which will display text, images, or a specified web site when solved correctly.

Another great point. A good rule of thumb for first-draft puzzles is "they are always too hard".

It might be helpful to note these are sometimes referred to as "signposting" (which I'm sure you know, but it would help promote understanding of common terminology)

While a hint-free game is possible, I see hints as the grease that keeps the solving machine running when the players have a bit of grit in their gears. It is very common for even experienced players to simply miss some information or have a blind spot in their thinking. So it is still desirable to plan for hints and figure out how to make them fit the game (as in your previous monkey example).

Another very good tip. I made a telegram-decoding puzzle as part of a game and even 30 or 40 letters really killed the momentum of the players. 20 or less is probably ideal.

Typo, should be "Below"

This is a very important point, thank you for noting it.

I think this is a much better idea than an unclued anagram. The most elegant puzzles have clear steps to a solution, and a clue about the translation gives the players a chance to have another nice aha.

These are hard to construct well, especially in printed form. Often they are readable without the lens if examined closely.

A more reliable puzzle might be having opaque letters sandwiched between two almost-opaque layers, having to be held up to a bright light to become visible.

typo, should be "so"

This repeats the text in the callout bubble, is that intentional?

Totally true. I took great care in a game to remove all numbers from some posters in a room. Despite that, players often attempted to use dates that they remembered from the movies. Lesson learned.

I would suggest that "designing to a lock" or "designing to a gate" is a better formulation, since "padlock" implies very specifically a hardware lock, and a good game will often have other non-mechanical and even non-physical locking mechanisms.

There is some effort in the escape room world to try to move away from "Game Master", "Clue Master", etc. to a term without "master" in it, such as "Game Host".

I've not run into this term before. It seems that it may be specific to the crossword puzzle world?

typo, should be "player's"

typo, should be "for a"

typo, should be "envelopes"

I think five is an upper bound for a fully linear game. It can be hard to construct puzzles that will actively engage that many players simultaneously, unless the puzzles themselves have parallel aspects (decoding that can be split up, research that can be done so one player is looking things up while another is using the obtained values, etc.)

Another very good point. When players are having fun in a game, all but the most basic/blatant plot points can go whooshing by them without being noticed.

I ask students to consider the same things when I've taught a high school escape room class. I also suggest that they should clearly identify the starting point, midpoint, and end point(s) of the game. Often they have a start and end in mind, but thinking about where players should be in the middle of a game can definitely improve the flow and coherence of the game.

This is a very useful concise summary of key concepts. I'm definitely going to refer to it in future thinking and work.

If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend talking with Risa Puno about her design for exactly this kind of reflection in her "Privilege of Escape" piece. She devoted considerable effort (and allocated 15+ minutes of post-game time with an in-character moderator) to a guided processing of things the players experienced during the game, and how that experience reflected larger real-life issues that they might not themselves have experienced.

This is something that few rooms do. Beyond a vague nod to "teambuilding", they seldom try to achieve a player mindset beyond "excited" or "scared".

When doing this, it is important to clue the players that they will need to save the previous puzzle solution information. If they erase a whiteboard with words they solved and then discover later they still needed them, they won't have a good experience. Providing specific places where output clearly goes, like a crossword grid or wall chart, will make it likely that the information will stay recorded through the rest of the game.

typo

And it is important not to gate progress with something like access to a Morse code sheet. A player may know Morse by heart, and it is a bad thing if that knowledge lets them skip ahead in a game-breaking way. The same is true of many common ciphers- players may simply know them. In one game, I skipped a puzzle because I recognized a scene from a computer game I loved as a kid in the 80s. Obscure, but clearly not unknowable.

A very important point. Based on previous game experience, players can easily make incorrect assumptions about what is/isn't in play as a resource.

The French and Chinese tally marks are totally new to me!

Or even opposing knowledge- is orange juice kept in the refrigerator or on the counter? Are dates dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy? I designed one puzzle involving time, where players could construct only a single valid time using provided pieces.... unless they used 24-hour time, as most Europeans do. Luckily that introduced only one extra solution, which I could accommodate with a minor change.

These are a common source of discussion among designers- can we expect at least one of the players in a group to know how to read them, at least up to X? Operating rotary phones, VHS players, cassette players, or even CD players are also knowledge that it may be wise not to assume.

This is a good idea, but must be done carefully. I've been the "Narrator" (host) quite a few times for a single-person RPG designed by Risa Puno and Avi Dobkin, called "The Quiet". In it there is a possible choice the player can make to stop their mission because it might be causing harm. However, it is presented in a way that makes it feel like giving up, and that ending of the game doesn't feel very satisfying. Escape Room players are used to pushing past obstacles and equate finishing with "winning", so a choice to abandon the original goal needs to be accompanied by the revelation of a new and equally attractive goal.

I've noticed that this works especially well in remote games and remote audio-only games in particular. The host is very easily able to deliver specific information to individual players via Zoom chat or similar. Agent Venture uses the "unique information" approach, while the Trapped games like Super Squad use the "you each have unique powers" approach.

Bottlenecking like this is also a good way to ensure that no one misses "wow" moments or major revelations in the plot. Fanning out to parallel, then back to linear for a bottleneck, done correctly, can accomplish both goals without being too obtrusive about it.

"NPC as lock" is a very useful concept.

While I agree with the concern, I think it is possible, especially in classroom settings, to ask for and receive suspension of disbelief. Small simple changes, such as turning off the lights, can help provide a transition from mundane reality to the imagined world. I think many teachers are experienced at leading their classes on fantastical journeys while the students are still in their usual classroom. Taking them to a different location is often better, of course, but I think much can be accomplished even with location constraints.

This is a very good point, and one I hadn't previously thought about in those terms.

As I noted above, I think it might be helpful to distinguish between meeting preferences for reasons of enjoyment and motivation versus actually being more effective for learning simply because the puzzle style matches the players notional style. While I might be more motivated to solve a puzzle that is tactile than one that is pure logic, they both might be equally effective at helping me learn. I acknowledge that the motivation effect could end up being important, since if players lose interest they will likely not learn very much beyond "this game is boring". But the alignment of styles itself seems like an incorrect goal. I apologize if I'm not adding much there, I suspect this is all well-trodden ground in academia.

I agree that variety is desirable, and that looking for puzzles that use different skills/experience is a good way to work towards that goal, but I'm concerned that describing it in terms of "intelligences", even for convenience, might cause people to have an incorrect design focus. It is too easy for people to think of these as innate "learning styles" instead of mostly based on experience and skill. I think having a variety of puzzle types will let players discover new talents and skills, and they will develop expertise upon repeated exposure. At the very least, I think it might be important to note that variety should drive learning of new things, instead of choosing puzzle types to match assumed existing skills.

(as you can probably tell, I'm a bit skeptical of the validity of using "learning styles", though I won't claim any deep knowledge in that area)

Minor typo, should probably be "to"