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There are loads of things you can do with the hold hand prop. We used this prop for our Forgotten Temple; players touch a rather creepy monkey skeleton on each side of the room – and once contact is made, a cove door “magically” slides open. We gave gotten rave reviews, and if you can hide the entrance efficiently – a very unexpected result.
We have seen the same prop used in 2 other escape rooms. One took a very simply route of connecting the wiring to tinfoil – and sticking it into the wall. It was the first time we encountered this puzzle, and did find it rather odd that we had to touch tinfoil, we feel this distracted from the experience.
The second escape room had an excellent concept – they placed each receiver in a skull. Each player then puts his/her hand on the skull, and once you hold hands a coffin opened. The room was dark, so I am unsure if we touched bare wiring, or some sort of conductive material.
This brings me to the actual practicality of the prop. It comes with a power supply, a control unit and wiring. The wiring is soldered and glued onto the board, so unless you cut and join wiring – you cannot select longer wires. In our case, the two hands were on opposite sides of the room. I was unsure if adding additional distance to the wiring would affect the functionality of the puzzle, but we gave it a test and I am happy to report that even with an additional 10 meters of wiring, the puzzle still works flawlessly.
We initially wired the ends to small pieces of tinfoil, which does work. We found though that players tended to pick at the tinfoil, resulting in constantly having to re-wire and re-stick the tinfoil down. This clearly was not a solid solution, so we went on the hunt for a solution, and I have one that works like a charm!
Electric Paint
We went with the option below, and while it is messy and rather thick to work with – it dries to a hard rubber like substance, and works like a bomb. It works much better than the tinfoil option, and players have not managed to damage the paint in any way. Note that it takes ages to dry though. We initially thought we could apply in the morning and run games that same evening – but the paint sadly had still not dried properly by that same evening.
Overall – we have been running this puzzle for about 8 months now, and have had excellent results. Highly recommended, and with some creativity, you can have some fun with the unit!
