Escape Room Challenge
Twelve Darwin High School Year 10 students participated in the Flinders Escape Room Challenge on Friday 20 September at Charles Darwin University.
The Flinders Escape Room Challenge is a real-life escape game experience which requires 6 players to work together as a team to find hidden clues and solve puzzles, both mental and physical, to escape a themed room. Players need to think fast, think hard and think smart to beat the clock and everyone agreed, it’s fun too!
A few weeks before the competition day, the Teams of up to 6 students were given a basic starter kit and challenged to design a portable escape ‘room’ with a health care theme. On competition day, the teams were given the opportunity to put judges through their escape rooms for the chance to share in up to $2000 worth of prizes.
Students were judged on how they explored different healthcare professions and their ability to think outside the box, stick to a minimal budget, work as a team, be innovative, plan and communicate effectively.
The competition day last week, gave students the opportunity to showcase their rooms and during breaks, participate in fun activities with staff, students currently studying a healthcare discipline and contestants from other high schools. Teams will also be invited to experience the escape rooms of other schools and pit their puzzle solving skills against each other.
Year 10 student and Escape Room Challenge participant, Mayooran Sathyendra said
I think most of us have been to an escape room but never thought of how it was made, I know I didn't. This was the part of the Flinders University Escape Room Challenge that made it fun for me the most, starting with no idea of how the behind-the-scenes stuff of escape rooms work and then slowly but surely building up our skills as we reach our final product. The lack of knowledge definitely made this a unique and insightful experience and if another chance to try something like this again comes up, I would love to go for it!
Year 10 student and Escape Room Challenge participant, Aydar Zarifullin said
The Escape Room Challenge is an amazing opportunity for anyone who likes to create puzzles and solve them. There are no limits to you imagination and creativity - you are in charge how you create and arrange the clues to your mystery (which in fact can range from finding information after memory loss to finding a cure against a disease!). My group did a murderer investigation- we had such an interesting and a bit too complex story that had our cardboard man named Greard as a star of the show. We didn't win, but we had lots of fun! The good thing about this challenge is that you can do it with your friends or the people that you don't even know and i guarantee that by the end, you will create new and stronger friendships!
Congratulations to Olivia Anderson, Claudine Faith Cainghog, Elissa Huntingford, Vanessa Kong, Kyriakos Lambrinidis and Kajal Desai who were the winning team and won $2000 for the school. Congratulations also to all the students who participated.
Feedback for all schools was that all entries were of a very high standard. A different challenge will be set for next year using requiring different resources for the escape rooms.
