Getting Started
Someone is kidnapping mythical creatures from
around the world. Can you stop them?
Someone has stolen the Professor’s Creature Compendium. The Professor is missing and mythical creatures have begun disappearing around the world. You have been hired by Evangeline, the Professor’s wife, to find the Professor and unravel this mystery before it’s too late.
Creature Caper is an online escape room you can run as a game master with your friends. All you need are the resources below and Zoom (or any video conferencing app).
| Running time | Approx. 75 minutes |
| # of players | 4-8 |
| Materials | Pencil, paper, and one printed handout |
Hosting a game
If you would like to be the game master and host this escape room for your friends to play, please keep reading (spoilers ahead!)
To prepare for a session:
- Familiarize yourself with the slides, script, and puzzles so that you can maintain a confident narrative pace.
- Invite players to assemble a team.
- Set up a Zoom meeting and, shortly before the event, email players with a link to the meeting along with the logic puzzle handout.
When starting your session:
- Start the Zoom meeting.
- Present the Google slides in Presenter View (drop down next to the Present button). This will open a second window that lets you jump to specific slides without using the arrow keys.
- Share the browser window containing the presentation in Zoom.
- Make the presentation full screen (from menu: View, Enter Full Screen).
- Consult the script for how to narrate the session.
Tips
The puzzles range from easy to medium difficulty and should hopefully not pose players too much trouble, especially if they have experience with escape rooms. But, there are a lot of them. To ensure you can complete the session in approximately 75 minutes and keep everyone engaged, here are a few tips:
- Be generous with hints. One easy way to speed things up if needed is to confirm correct answers as players solve multi-part puzzles, e.g., if it’s a 5 digit code, let them know as they figure out each successive number vs. requiring them to give you the full code before giving feedback.
- (If you can) use 2 Game Masters. With 2 GMs, one can narrate and the other can manage the slide deck. This allows you to maintain a steady pace and worked well for us.
Good luck!