When Dallin Henrie was asked to create an escape room for a Mormon youth activity, he thought the challenge sounded fun. As the owner ofGetout Gamesin Provo and Salt Lake City, Henrie has experience designing these types of rooms.
However, unlike the rooms for his business, this room needed to be portable and low cost.
“We had a lot of the youth from the stake chipping in and helping out, but at the end of the day I think we put together an activity we can be really proud about,” Henrie said.
As Henrie designed the game, he realized other youth groups may be interested in the resource so he decided to make it available online.
“We’ve been overwhelmed and encouraged by how many people have been excited to download it and do it in their own wards and stakes,” Henrie said.
The download includes instructions for set up, printable clues and links to video clues. Groups will need to supply their own black light, black light marker and a combination lock.
“The majority of the props to make the room work actually come from the church building itself. You can find them in the library, you can find them in the clerk’s office,” Henrie said.
Some of these items include the Book of Mormon, LDS hymn books and church pamphlets for youth. In order for the clues in the download to work, the items used have to be exactly the same. Using materials published by the LDS Church guarantees consistency and easy access.
Henrie said it was suggested he create a general Christian-based escape room as well that would be more applicable for youth of other denominations. While he likes the idea, ensuring consistency between clues and props is one concern he has.
“You could get 20 different bibles and have a verse read 20 different ways and that makes it difficult to control the experience and make sure that you can do clues that are going to work,”
Henrie said.
