Excitement buzzed through Ransom Everglades’ Engineering II class when their teacher, Mr. Bob DuBard, unveiled an unconventional final project for the fall semester: designing and building an escape room.

What started as an ambitious idea quickly turned into one of the most hands-on and immersive projects the class had ever worked on. Over the course of two months, students collaborated to design puzzles, integrate engineering principles, and transform a section of the school’s library into a fully functional escape room. The project demanded both creativity and technical skill, testing the team’s ability to solve problems and work together. 

Every great escape room must have an intricate story, and this one was no different. The students crafted a scenario centered on the office of Mr. Petar Solomun, a water-polo coach and the Upper School Dean of Students at Ransom Everglades. Players took on the role of students accused of minor infractions, such as tardiness, improper dress code, and missing class. The goal was to uncover a hidden confession document to prove the infractions were real.

“Mr. DuBard came up with the initial idea for the escape room based on his experience with various escape rooms, including zombie apocalypse and jailbreak themes,” said Diego Cruz ’25. “After introducing the concept as our end-of-semester project, our class collaborated in multiple brainstorming sessions. We focused on creating a theme that was both school-appropriate and engaging, something that would be fun and immersive while still being accessible to everyone at Ransom.”

Through a series of puzzles scattered across the room, players gathered clues, unlocked secret compartments, and pieced together information to solve the mystery and “escape.” The escape room was designed with a mix of physical and digital interactions, requiring players to manipulate objects, decipher Morse code, and even use a reprogrammed phone to uncover hidden messages.

The escape room also tasked the students with applying core skills that were introduced in their engineering classes. “The number one thing was carrying over what we learned from Engineering I, like using Fusion 360 to design and 3D print or laser cut objects,” explained Rafael Bonafonte ’25. “One of the coolest things was how my classmates, Manolo [Campos ’25] and Colton [Seidel ’25], reprogrammed an old-school phone so that when players dialed a specific number, it played a pre-recorded message as a clue.”

“We applied engineering principles throughout the entire process, starting with brainstorming and collaboration. We used the engineering method—trial and error, redesign, and improvement—to refine our puzzles. Since this was the first escape room project in our engineering class, we had no previous designs to reference. Instead, we relied on our own experiences from escape rooms, adapting and creating new ideas while problem-solving as a team,” said Cruz. 

The escape room featured a series of interconnected puzzles that players had to solve under a time limit. These included:

1. A water polo goal challenge that revealed part of a Morse code message when completed.
2. A hidden message inside a fan blade, only visible when the fan was turned off and illuminated with a UV flashlight.
3. A student schedule puzzle, where following a fictional character’s school itinerary led to a key code (spelling out “SALAMI”) to open a locked cylinder.
4. A clock mechanism, where turning a trophy adjusted the clock hands—once it hit 13:28 (military time), the game was complete.

To ensure the puzzles were fair and engaging, the students conducted multiple test runs, adjusting difficulty based on feedback. “We had volunteers go through trial runs, and if a puzzle was too easy, we made it harder. If it was too hard, we simplified it,” Bonafonte said.

The design process involved plenty of challenges for the students to overcome. Students reported having difficulty realizing the puzzles and figuring out some of the extremely technical aspects of the room. 

“The hardest part of making the escape room was creating the physical puzzles, because although it’s not easy to have a bunch of ideas of what you could do, I think it’s even harder to actually bring those ideas to life,” said Mr. DuBard. “We ran into a few technical difficulties, like a misconfigured clock that revealed the final puzzle before it was supposed to, which led the players to solve it before completing all the necessary steps. Another time, we forgot to lock the final file cabinet. These were small mistakes, but we definitely caught them and fixed them later on.”

According to DuBard, the project was inspired by his love of escape rooms and a summer project where he helped a colleague design one for children. “I realized this had all the characteristics of what I want to see in an Engineering II project—students applying their design knowledge, building to a specific purpose, and having an authentic audience,” he explained.

With the success of this year’s escape room, many students and faculty are wondering if this project will become a staple of the Engineering II curriculum. 

“I absolutely am planning on doing it again next year,” Mr. DuBard confirmed. “Now, if it doesn’t have the same traction, we might pivot to something else—you have to remain dynamic. But right now, I think it’s a great project.”