Inspired from right here in the South Hills, virtual escape rooms have been popping up all over the country. Made by students, teachers and librarians, it all started when Sydney Kraweiec, the Youth Services Librarian at the Peters Township Public Library designed and shared her virtual puzzle, Hogwarts Digital Escape Room. These digital escape rooms are fun and engaging, with themes the whole family can get behind. With the help of some friends, we have been working on a list of some of the best virtual escape rooms for you and your family. The best part is, they're all free!
Grades Pre-K to 2
● Dr. Seuss Escape Room - Explore the world of Dr. Seuss by completing all the tasks and unlocking the codes.
● Help Pete the Cat Get His Groove Back - Pete the Cat has lost his groove and needs your help! Can you solve the clues and help him find what he has lost? Let's get groovy!
● Mother Goose Mystery - Something terrible has happened in Nursery Rhyme Land. Do you think you can solve the mystery?
● Pete the Cat and the Birthday Party Mystery - Do you like Pete the Cat? If so, you’ve come to the right place!
● Trapped in the Toy Room - This digital escape room was created by Angela Fioramonti of the Cuyahoga Falls Library. Graphics were made using Canva. This escape room is intended for Kindergarten - 2nd Graders, as it highlights early literacy skills and simple math/counting! You'll need a piece of paper and a pencil to keep track of all the clues you get. If you're ready to get started, click yes!
Grades 2-5
● A Day at the Park - The day you have been waiting for has finally come! You and your friends are going to the amusement park for a fun filled day of rides, food, and shopping. Now all you need to do is count your money and make a budget to spend your stash.
● Animal Adventure Escape Room - Your class is taking a field trip to the Zoo but when you get there all of the animals are gone! Help the keepers find them all and get them back to their home.
● Curious Case of the Dino Duplicator - Someone has stolen the only existing copy of the super top secret book: Dinosaurs and How to Clone Them by Dr. Dora Doubles. It is believed that the culprit is planning to make an army of dinosaurs to take over the world! You are the detective who has been assigned this case. Your mission is to figure out who the culprit is and find the book ASAP. The culprit has left evidence throughout multiple libraries. You must visit the 9 different libraries, examine and collect evidence as well as get through the locks the culprit left behind to slow your progress. We are giving you a special device that you can activate once you have gotten through a lock that will bring you to the next library scene. Make sure to take notes about any evidence you might find so you catch the right culprit at the end!
The chief of police sends you information about some possible suspects who the department have been monitoring for possible crimes around town. There must be thirty people in the stack! You whittle it down to your top four suspects. These top four people have managed to stay under the radar for the most part, but some information has been collected. Read through the suspect profiles and get going!
● Dog Man Digital Escape Room - Great gobs of goo! Dog Man is at it again as he tries to escape from a digital locked room. It's up to you to save this epic hero of the day. Are you up to the challenge of figuring out clues found in: text, photos, or videos? Can our protagonist depend on you? Will he need more? Will his remote control die and shut down his TV before you are able to help? Only you can help by entering a parallel universe digital dark room. If you escape, then Dog Man will too! Good luck!!!!
● Famous American People - Choose from 10 famous Americans you would like to help escape.
● Get Me Home If You Can - Oh no! Your 1968 weekend adventure has turned to disaster. After spending a lovely 3 days in Oregon, you want nothing more than to be home... however it seems that the airline has different plans. Dressed in your best garb, you embark on an adventure just to get yourself home. Can you get there while the happy vacation memories are still fresh?
● Going Buggy Escape Room - Who Let the Bugs In? Oh no! Our computer programs are buzzing, and beeping but not like they should. Bugs, real bugs, have gotten in and messed everything up. Please help rewrite the programs, beat the bugs and Break Out!
● Into the Lion’s Den Escape Room - You and your classmates are on a field trip to the zoo. You have been to see the penguins, gorillas and the pandas. Next up are the lions.
You are lucky because your class has been selected to walk around inside the lion enclosure while the lions are being checked out by the zoo’s veterinarian. What a great opportunity! The field guide leads your class into the enclosure, and you feel like you have stepped onto an African plain. There is so much to see.
You get mesmerized by the lion enclosure, and you realize that you have been left behind by your classmates and the field guide. You walk over to the door where you entered, only to realize that it is now locked. You continue to look around not seeing anyone. Where did they all go? Oh no, you are locked in the lion enclosure.
You remember the field guide saying that the lions would be back in 1 hour. Looking at your watch, you realize you have already been here for 15 minutes… That means you only have 45 minutes to find a way to breakout of the lion’s enclosure. There’s got to be a way out… Right?
● Mermaid Escape Room - Welcome to the Mermaid Escape Room! Solve the puzzles to escape the room and earn pearls of wisdom to help protect the oceans for mermaids and other sea life.
● Minecraft Escape Room - You can complete this escape room as a family, individual, or against friends!
● Native Americans - Solve a digital breakout for the Powhatan, The Pueblo and The Lakota
● Pikachu’s Rescue - Pikachu has disappeared and needs your help! Can you solve the mystery of the Pokemon's disappearance before time runs out? Are you up for the challenge? Ages 6 and up.
● Save Sports - The school sports teams are in trouble and they need your help! Can you help save them? Solve the clues in this math digital escape room to save them from certain demise!
● States of Matter/What’s the Matter - Everything around you is made of matter. Scientists group matter based on its properties, or characteristics: what it looks like and how it acts in different situations. Matter can take three different forms. The three forms are solid, liquid, and gas.
Solid matter has a definite shape. It also takes up a definite amount of space. Liquid matter takes the shape of its container. If you were to look at liquid matter under the microscope, you would see its tiny particles sliding past each other. In the form of a gas, matter is usually invisible. The air around us has several different gases, like the oxygen we breathe in and the carbon dioxide we breathe out.
All Ages/Family Fun Escape Rooms
● Asteroid Collision - The year is 2135 and Earth has made lots of progress in exploring our solar system. You are living in space on the space station Freedom 2 near the asteroid belt. The space station is a base for an asteroid mining company. They are mining for water, metals, and minerals. The company accidentally mined too deep and a big chunk of asteroid is headed straight for Freedom 2. Thousands of lives will be lost.
There is a special "Big Space Blaster" tool ("BSB" for short) that you have been developing, in secret, for just this kind of thing. But you lost all the access codes to your secret lab. You know you have left hints around your room but you have to decode them. The asteroid will destroy Freedom 2 in 45 minutes if you don’t get to your "BSB" tool in time. You have 45 minutes to get into your secret lab and save the space station.
● Books Alive - Escape the Rhymes - This is an escape room for all ages, and intended to be worked on as a family - don't let the theme fool you! These puzzles range from very simple to quite challenging, making it something the whole family can do together! You’ll need to know some nursery rhymes for these challenges, so if you have a nursery rhyme book, now’s a great time to pull it out. If not, all the rhymes are available online.
● Brain Teasers Escape Room - there's trouble afoot in Pleasantville! Students everywhere are being stumped by brain teasers and until they solve them the town's School Spirit Parade is on hold. Can you help them solve the puzzles and save the day?
● Bunnie Escape - After a long night of hiding eggs, Bunnie was exhausted. Sleepily, Bunnie made the way home to the rabbit hole to get some rest. Bunnie hopped down the hole and locked the door behind her. Weird, she didn't remember leaving the door open but was too tired to think about it. Down the hole she went and turned to the left to the soft mattress that awaited. "BAM!" Bunnie slams into a table. "Now I'm awake!", she exclaimed. Now with eyes wide open, Bunnie realizes she's in the wrong home! She scurries back up the tunnel but can't get the door open. "Oh, No! It has a combination lock!" Bunnie remembers seeing a note on the table and goes back inside.
● Cabin Fever - This Escape Room was created by Celeste Trottier, Teen Services Librarian at the St. Albert Public Library. These games were designed with 11-17 year olds in mind, but players of all ages enjoy the puzzles!
● Camouflage Caper Escape Room - Camouflage is a visual Disguise. Without it, an animal would be recognized easily. If the natural color of an animal makes it look like it's surroundings, that is camouflage. A tigers striped in the long grass or the winter coat of an Artic fox are both types of camouflage. Now the animals are using their disguises to hide from you! You must use your bset detective skills to find all of the animals.
● Can You Make it through the Enchanted Forest? - Answer the questions to pass safely through the forest to the Castle of the King and Queen of Needham.
● Chasing Carmen - This highly-demanded sequel to our first escape room will lead you through challenging puzzles to catch up with Carmen. While having played the first one is not required, we highly recommend it to appreciate the storyline! Play the first adventure here: rb.gy/blsqlk
● Cinderella Escapes - Welcome to this Cinderella Escapes! virtual escape room. Can you help Cinderella get to the ball? Solve the clues and puzzles that follow to get her to her happily-ever-after!
● Defeat COVID-19 - You are surfing the TV channels when an emergency news broadcast comes on. It appears there is a viral threat to the human population and steps need to be taken in order to prevent its spread. It is up to you to put into place an action plan and save the world. Welcome to the end of the world as we know it, unless we can stop the spread of this new virus.
● Escape from Treasure Island - Welcome to Andover Public Library’s digital escape room inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Treasure Island!"
● Escape from Wonderland Digital Escape Room - based on the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
● Escape the Fairy Tale: Part 1 - based on Goldilocks and the The Bears
● Escape the Fairy Tale: Part 2 - based on Snow White
● Escape to Narnia - Welcome to our Escape to Narnia Digital Escape Room! This is a story of our own creation and if you are a Narnia buff, we know that it doesn’t quite fit in with the timeline. But we hope it’s still fun!
● Escape Your Boring Break - Hello there! Are you on spring break and terribly bored because you can't go anywhere or do anything cool? Are you tired of talking to your friends digitally instead of in person? Do your parents constantly say things like, "Go outside! It's beautiful!" or "Why don't you take the dogs for a walk?" or the dreaded, "If you're really bored, I can find plenty for you to do around the house!" Yikes. Friends, it's time for an escape. An escape room, that is.
● Halloween Haunts Digital Escape Room - Its All Hallows Eve and you and your friends have stumbled into an old graveyard. You must figure our all of the clues and unloick the locks before the clock strikes 12 or else...
● Harry Potter: Escaping Detention - Snape is trying to give you detention! He thinks you put a degreasing potion in his morning pumpkin juice, which has made his hair poofy like a poodle's. Answer the questions to escape to Hagrid's house and avoid Snape's wrath. Proper capitalization, spelling and punctuation matters. You may need to use articles such as 'a', 'an' and 'the' when necessary.
● Harry Potter: Escape Room - It was a dark and stormy night during quarantine, and you decide you finally have the time to read a big book series. You've heard so much about the Harry Potter books that you decide to sit down and start reading.
You love the first book so much that you read it in one night. When you go to reach for book two *CRACK* your room shakes with thunder and your dark windows show lightning so bright you can see the outlines of your neighbor's houses. Only, it's not your neighbor's houses you see... it's the outline of a castle!
You look around and your room has changed. It looks like a medieval castle, with stone walls, statues of knights in armor, and banners everywhere. You look at the banners more closely and you see they are made of four distinct designs: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin.
You gasp as you realize what happened! You don't know how, but you've been sucked into Hogwarts! You look more carefully and discover the only exits are four distinct doors...
● Harry Potter: Hogwarts Escape Room - This escape experience was created by Sydney Krawiec, Youth Services Librarian at Peters Township Public Library in McMurray, PA. www.ptlibrary.org
● Hatchet Escape Room - This experience was created by Marie Davidsohn, Youth Services Librarian at Aiken County Public Library.
● Hotel Heist - Travel back in time to this luxurious 1920s hotel. One of the guests was robbed last night at a masquerade ball. You must investigate the crime scene, talk to witnesses and accuse a suspect in this game.
● JUMANJI Digital Escape Room - Welcome to our Jumanji Digital Escape Room! This is a story of our own creation with utmost respect for the inspiration provided by the book Jumanji, by Chris Van Allsburg. We hope you have fun!
● Looney Toons Locks Escape Room - Explore the worlds of the Looney Tunes characters by completing all the tasks and unlocking the codes.
● Magic Final Exam Digital Escape Room - You and your fellow mage-students are due to take your spring finals. You’ve just finished Astrology & Prophecy and are heading into your next exam.
● Maker Escape - Robots have gone haywire and we need an expert coder like you to make things right
● Missing Tiger - A Sherlock Holmes escape room - A rare Sumatran tiger has escaped from the London Zoo! Professor Stamford, President of the Zoological Society of London, calls for Sherlock Holmes to help track down the missing cat. Since time is of the essence, Holmes requests your assistance.
● Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters Escape Room - Hello and welcome to our Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters themed Digital Escape Room! It is inspired by the book Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale by John Steptoe. It tells the story of Mufaro's two beautiful daughters, one bad-tempered and one kind and sweet. They both go before the king but only one can be queen.
● Rescue the Revolution American Revolution - The British are coming! You must find a secret document hidden in a chest at Boston Harbor that contains the key to winning the war.
● Roald Dahl Digital Escape
● Sher-Lock Digital Escape Room - Welcome to our Sher-Lock Holmes Digital Escape Room! This story is one of our own creation and is not set in a specific time period. We just wanted to have some fun with Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character.
● Shrek Escape Room
● Smurfs Escape Room - Help the Smurfs escape the evil Gargamel by completing all the tasks and unlocking the codes.
● Sugar Rush - You're an apprentice at a bakery. You're about to start your shift when you discover it's has been pranked with all kinds of puzzles! Can you solve the riddes and narrow down the suspects?
● Spy Apprentice Digital “Escape Room” Adventure - Since we are all stuck at home for a while, let’s “escape the room” together on this spy themed mission where we take you around the world solving clues!
● Taneytown Library Fairy Tale Escape Room
● The Mad Wizard's Tower - You're trapped in a castle with a strange wizard who isn't too keen on revealing the secret to escape.
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