Minecraft Camp: Engineer Your Own Escape Room or Puzzle Game

Do you enjoy solving escape rooms, dungeons, and games? Have you ever tried making your own? In this class we'll do both after I teach you the basics of how to make an interactive escape room using Minecraft. In this class, students will learn basic circuits used in programming and engineering via Minecraft's redstone system, and then creatively apply them to create traps and locks for their escape rooms. Students will test their creations as engineers do, receiving feedback from their partners and making continual adjustments.

Get ready to impress your friends and family with your trickery. Learn to create a jungle temple like in Indiana Jones, or how to escape from an icy dungeon in the mountains, or an evil lair inside a volcano! This class is one step on the path to designing your own future games or interactive puzzles. It will cover important principles that you can use to make 'escapes' using Google Forms, Roblox or other video games, and even one in real life!

Take inspiration from my many build designs or make your own, and engineer your own traps, mazes, and riddles to give people challenges as they try to solve the goals that you set. I make sure to include a range of simple to challenging redstone contraptions so everyone can learn something from the camp.

At the beginning of each class you will test out some of my escape rooms and see if you can get through them. After teaching you how I created them, you can build your own while making sure to change the riddles and puzzles so they are unique. Every class there will be a testing phase where you and a partner test each other's builds and give feedback so that the difficulty can be adjusted so it's not too easy or too hard.

* Day 1: Test out a few escape rooms and review as a class what the design principles are. Then we learn how to an engineering NOT gate with redstone torches, and create a multi-lever lock system, including floor traps.
* Day 2: Find what is hidden! Learn how to connect buttons or bow-and-arrow targets to redstone so you can create hidden doors. We'll also review new traps you can use to fool people.
* Day 3: Learn how comparators work in the game and in engineering settings. Use it to create keys in item frames, cauldrons, chests, hoppers and and more for this impressively complicated design. 
* Day 4: Can you find the key? Learn to build an iron door with a lock-and-key system, and review clever ways to hide your "key" around your escape-room.
* Day 5: The last day we will finish any work that needs doing then test everyone's dungeon.

NOTE ABOUT MINECRAFT: There are two versions of Minecraft that run on different code: Java (PC, Mac, Linux) and Bedrock. This class uses Bedrock, and is compatible with the following devices: PC with Windows 10, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, phone or tablet version. This is not a Minecraft Java class. Please make sure your child has online-play enabled with their Microsoft account, including Nintendo Switch Online, Xbox Live Gold, and PlayStation® Plus subscriptions for their respective device. I will give more detailed instructions about friending me and joining class upon registering.