Escape Room Games to Play at Home
Escape room games for home compared: boxed escape rooms, card-based series and advent calendars, plus how they work, how hard they are and how to build your own.
An escape room at home works like the real thing, minus the locked door. You open a box, a deck of cards or an advent calendar door, and a chain of puzzles stands between you and the end of the story. Codes, hidden images, maps and objects all count as clues, and a decoder, an app or a solution card tells you whether you got it right.
The formats differ more than the boxes suggest. Some games are single adventures played in an hour. Series such as EXIT and Unlock! offer dozens of scenarios at different difficulty levels. Escape room advent calendars spread one story across 24 doors in December. Some components are destroyed as you play, others can be reset and passed on.
New to the genre? Read how an escape room in a box works, then compare the best escape room games for home and the best escape room advent calendars. If you would rather design the puzzles yourself, our guide to a DIY escape room shows how to set one up for friends or family.
Play and solve better
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How to DIY Escape Room: How to Make an Escape Room at HomeHow to make a DIY escape room at home: write the story, build a linear or parallel puzzle chain, pick locks and ciphers, test the game and prepare hints.
How these games work
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Guide Escape Room in a Box: How At-Home Escape Room Kits WorkHow an escape room in a box works: boxed adventures, card series and calendars, what is inside, how answers and hints are checked, play time and player count.
Games compared
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Best Escape Room Advent Calendars: One Puzzle a Day Until ChristmasThe best escape room advent calendars for solo solvers, couples and families with teens, compared on doors, daily playing time, age rating and format.
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The Best Escape Room Board Games: EXIT, Unlock! and MoreThe best escape room board game series compared: EXIT, Unlock!, Deckscape and Clue Escape, on difficulty, app use, replay and players, with one pick per need.
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The Best Escape Room Games to Play at HomeSix boxed escape room games compared on players, time, age, how answers are checked and replay, from Escape Room: The Game to a wooden Cluebox.
Before you pick a box
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How to choose Easy Escape Room Games (and Hard Ones): How to Pick the LevelEasy escape room games vs hard ones: how EXIT, Unlock!, Deckscape and Clue Escape rate difficulty, what the numbers mean, and a grid to match a box to your group.
FAQ
How does an escape room game work at home?
You open a box, a deck of cards or a calendar door and solve a chain of puzzles to reach the end of a story, usually within a suggested time. Answers are checked with a decoder, an app or a solution card, and hints are available when you are stuck.
How many people can play an at-home escape room?
Most are designed for 1 to 4 or 1 to 6 players. Beyond that, players crowd around the same cards; for bigger groups, a murder mystery party or two boxes played in parallel works better.
Can you replay an escape room game?
Some series, such as EXIT, ask you to cut, fold or write on the components, so they are played once. Others, such as most Unlock! scenarios, leave the cards intact so you can pass them on.