In normal times, we love visiting escape rooms – both on vacation, and at home. We started with an escape room in Portland, Maine, and absolutely loved it. Because escape rooms generally take about an hour to complete (or fail, as the case may be), it can be a quick indoor activity for your family vacation.
If you are looking for something different to do, and can’t visit an in-person escape room, here are some of the best escape room games online.
If we’ve missed your favorite online escape room games, leave us a comment and we’ll check it out.
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The Best Escape Room Games Online
Free and Easy Escape Rooms
Harry Potter Themed Escape Room
A clever Youth Services Librarian at Peters Township Public Library in McMurray, PA created a Harry Potter-themed online escape room. It’s a relatively-easy adventure game, but it’s something that kids could do on their own. My son and I really enjoyed going through it.
It’s free, and easily accessible through a Google doc. You’ll need to view one separate webpage, but everything is linked within this document. You can find it here.
Breakout City
Breakout Games is one of our favorite in-person escape rooms. This small chain has locations throughout the United States. We’ve done (although didn’t succeed) one of their fun, private escape rooms and can’t wait to return.
They also have a great, free, online escape room. Breakout City is a story where the local bank was recently robbed. You’ll need to solve puzzles to find the suspects in order to solve this point and click game.
My son and I did this game and were impressed with how dynamic the website is. Things on the site change as you start to solve the puzzles. It’s a great free option if you are looking for something to pass the time.
You can find the free escape room game from Breakout Games here.
The Escape Game Field Trips
Can’t leave your house for a field trip? Bring the museums to you in this free online escape room that takes place at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
In the game, you are lost in the museum during a school field trip. You’ll have to follow the clues doing a virtual visit to the museum before you’ll be able to leave. My son and I were able to complete this game in about 30 minutes, and it was a fun way to explore the museum from home.
You can find The Escape Room field trips here.
365 Room Escape Games
If you are looking for a quick escape game, 365 Escape offers dozens of free small escape room games. These include hidden objects games and other online games where you’ll find clues and use them to escape. These aren’t especially complicated and don’t have real storylines, but they are still a good way to pass the time.
You can find these games here.
Paid Online Escape Rooms
There are also some online escape rooms where you’ll have a pay a small fee. These are longer, more complicated puzzles, and are best for older kids and when you have more time.
The Heist: The Escape Game
My kids and I absolutely loved this complex, online escape room. You’ll start with an online portal, as well as a download drive of documents and clues. There’s video evidence, online puzzles, newspaper articles, photos, and so much more.
If you need a hint, there’s a list on the side of the portal that you can click on. We did need hints several times and found them to be really useful.
While we only did Volume 1, there are three volumes available for purchase here.
Premium, Box Escape Rooms
Breakout Games also offers physical, escape room boxes that you can purchase through their brand Dispatch. These take a bit longer, as you’ll have to wait for the box to ship. They are also more expensive, but they are well worth it!
There are currently four different “rooms”, with varying lengths. While these were initially released as a subscription, they are now all shipping at once. We choose “On the Run” because it’s the longest and will take the most time.
Each box is filled with clues, including physical objects like wedding invitations, paper napkins, and decoder coins. The mystery takes you online as well – some of the clues include Instagram accounts, websites, phone numbers, and text chats.
If you need hints as you go through the game, there’s a Slack channel where other players share information. We are having so much fun playing. Although it’s more expensive than the other options, we’ve found that it’s worthwhile because each box takes at least an hour.
You can find the Breakout Games boxes here. The box set that we are currently doing is available on Amazon.
Other Physical, Home Escape Games
There are also some fun board game style escape games that can be played at home or on vacation. These games are great for teens and are fun for team building.
Cold Case Crackers is a mystery game that comes in two file folders. There are several different phases to the game, and you can analyze clues and evidence both in the folders and online. An online tipline is available if you need to get a hint.
There are several different mysteries to solve and each one is sold separately. It’s less escape room and more mystery – with a lesser focus on puzzles and more focus on analyzing clues. You can buy it here.
Escape Room the Game is a box set that includes three different escape rooms. Unique to this game is a decoder where you input individual keys as you solve the puzzles. The decoder, which requires batteries, counts down the clock and lets you know if you’ve figured out the correct answer.
This game comes with hint cards, and you are able to pick up a hint at prescribed times during the hour. You can only play each game once, and each one takes about an hour. You can buy it here.
Greg Escaper
Tuesday 7th of April 2020
There are so many people stuck at their houses due to quarantine and these escape room games have helped them. I have been playing these games all the time during the day.