We needed a portable escape game for a 12x12 booth at a local 4th of July festival. We wanted to market our escape room and wanted to give patrons new to escape rooms a puzzle, problem solving experience. We wanted the booth to be open (free flowing) to allow visitors a chance to enter the booth. The initial thought was to have carts with drawers, each draw having a different type of drawer lock, cam, magnetic, pad lock, etc. We also thought having two sets of drawers, front and back would allow two players or groups to play simultaneously.

We used a “36 in. H Picket Fence Cart With Pull Out Trays” with casters (wheels) (Figure 1-1)… retail price $300. We didn’t pay $300, we paid about $50. These don’t sell and the liquidation warehouses are selling these by the pallet. If you look on Craigslist or eBay, you will find these cheap.

Figure 1-1

We used the pull-out trays and original wood to build drawers for both sides. We didn’t have time to build multiple carts nor did we have time to experiment with lots of different types of locks. We used pad locks for most of the drawers and a magnetic lock for the top, final drawer.

The game was built sequentially, from the bottom up. The bottom drawer is the starting point and they work their way up the cart to the final, top drawer to win the game.

We used an innovative "4 pegs in the correct hole" magnetic reed switches setup to unlock the magnetic lock on the top drawer. By using reed switches at different depths, we could put game pieces on sticks with earth magnets positioned for the proper depth for the correct hole. The game pieces fit in PVC pipe about 2 inches deep. Inside the PVC were the reed switches, mounted horizontally on the wall of the PVC at different depths. The reed switches were wired sequentially to allow power to complete a circuit to drive a relay to cut power to the magnetic lock when all reed switches were in the ON/triggered position.

In the top, final drawer, we used a 4 button, momentary button, arcade style button, light up button to allow the player to choose the final answer (press of a button) to win.

We used an audio triggered (see other post) to play different sounds, a winning sound and a losing sound track.

Each side of the cart is a little different. The combinations to locks and clues are little different so that participants on the other side of the cart can’t influence (give the answer/over hear) the other side. We setup folding chairs inside the booth (under a tent) on each end of the cart and participants played singly or in pairs. The whole setup was a huge success. We had patrons as young as 8 play and as old as 80+. Yes, we were able get a pair of great grandmas to play and they loved it.

Here are some pictures of the cart. We hope to make another, with different puzzles for other street fairs and festivals in our area. We also allow patrons in our waiting room to play the cart. More pictures and detail to come.

Figure 1-2 depicts the power we are supplying to the components of the cart. Nothing special, just a power strip and some wall warts (transformers). We are using 2 9vdc power supplies for the magnetic locks, one for each side. Separate 9VDC power supply for the relays cutting power to the magnetic locks. And we are using 5vdc power supply for the audio board (DFMini). We share power to the relays and the audio boards. We ran the wires up the middle of the cart. We purposely left space inside the middle, were the back sides of the drawers would touch. We made sure there was a 1 inch space so they would not touch.

Figure 1-2

Figure 1-3 depicts the peg game pieces. These are the prototypes, made with dowel rods with earth magnets at different depths on the dowel rods. We molded (created some simple molds using starch and silicone) and used two part casting resin to create a single piece.

Figure 1-3

Parts

Picket-Fence-Cart-With-Pull-Out-Trays (Amazon)

Starch and silicone molding (Instructables)

Casting Resin (Amazon)