Now that my ICS3U students have completed the escape room this year, I can share what we got up to! If you make use of the escape room in class, I’d love to hear about it.
Topics covered: conditional statements, loops, input/output, tiny bit of string indexing
Theme: Retro games

There were 3 phases to the escape room:
Phase 1: Initial problem solving to determine the required letters to crack a code. This included some thinking problems & some coding problems.
Phase 2: A decryption problem using a Caesar Cipher.
Phase 3: A final black screen where the konami code needs to be entered to win.
Phase 1
The website can be found here.
In this phase, students were shown 6 different images, which each link to a problem to be solved.
The solution to each problem results in a letter. So in the end, they have 6 letters.
To exit phase 1, they need to fill in a google form with their code
The site provides an overview of each of the problems. In some cases, students were given scrambled code. In other cases they had a logic problem to sort out.
Around the room there were characters that related to the storyline and they provided the input for the programs.
Problem | Physical clues in the room | Digital Resources | Final Letter |
Clyde | Sonic the hedgehog: 4 | Scrambled code in jamboard | Z |
Inky | Spiderman hanging: 2 Spiderman standing: Fortune And Glory Kid, Fortune And Glory Indiana Jones → table with the following: A 0 E 20 I 40 M 60 | Code with tracing table | I |
Pinky | N/A | Logic problem. | Q |
Pac | N/A | Character images.This one is a big weak because the decoded message is Mario’s Arch_Rival and they are supposed to find Wario and then Wario[0] = WI’d change this in the future but most get it with some light coaching | W |
Blinky | N/A | Logic problem | F |
Scared Ghost | Deadpool: 3 A bunch of different groups of bananas around the room, each in kind of an arrow shape pointing to a letter 9 bananas: G 6 bananas: P 7 bananas: K 4 bananas: C | Code and a tracing table | G |
Final answer for Phase 1: ZZIIQWQWGF
Phase 2
The website can be found here.
Physical clue in the room -> Giant dinosaur with an exercise headband: 5
This phase was comprised of pseudocode for decrypting a string that’s been shifted using a Caesar Cipher.
Final answer for Phase 1: UUDDLRLRBA
The Konami code!
Phase 3
The website can be found here
It may be restricted for some viewers. Contact me at courtney.edwards@ocdsb.ca if you need a copy of the code. This is the video I used to quickly create the program because this was no time to reinvent the wheel.
This is the embed script:
<iframe frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”100%” src=”https://wheatsmoggynlp.courtneyedwards.repl.co/?embed=true“></iframe>
Essentially, it’s a javascript file that displays a black screen. If the user enters the konami code, then they see a blinking excited completion screen.