This is roughly how it went:
Two fun loving colleagues walking back from a meeting one day…
D: Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to do an Escape Room for students? 😁
J: That sounds like fun! What did you have in mind? 😂
D: This python course I’m teaching… 🐍
J: wow! A Python Escape! Niiiice. 🤩
D: Yeh it would be super cool, but I don’t think we’ll be allowed to lock students in a room… 😬
J: Good point. Hmmmm…….. 🤔
Many coffees later – “Y’know, the IDE is actually called IDLE…” 🤯
Some weeks later – “I need more cardboard! Please save boxes if you have some in your office.” 🥺
Many glue sticks later – “But they’re not going to get that bit. How can we make it more obvious in an obscure kind of way..?” 🤭
Much head scratching later – “Wait! There’s a screen saver on this Raspberry Pi we can use!!!” 😜
Too many YouTube tutorials later – “Hang on, do you need the hole at the front or at the back..?” 🤔
And by the beginning of 2019 it was done: A (Monty)Python Escape room game. 🎉🐍
And, no, we didn’t lock students into a room. We made them break into cardboard boxes instead. Sounds trivial? You’ve not seen my boxes!
Carefully crafted over several weeks, lovingly decorated and filled with fiendishly ambiguous content, six boxes, some with secret compartments, representing six different spaces in an imaginary university building where you’re working late one night and suddenly something goes click in the room next door…
Elaborate boxes + mood music + a bunch of ‘stuff’ on a Raspberry Pi = an hour of delightful tension
And your coding skills only get you so far: to succeed you’ll need some Monty Python skills, too. Some parts are pretty obscure and require more than just a bit of lateral thinking. It’s a game for nerds after all! 🤓
To make the boxes I’ve relied heavily on an endless amount of clever YouTube tutorials and particularly the MiniGear channel . The game was well received and indeed a lot of fun for makers and players alike.
A digital version of the game is in the making – watch this space!