The games · On paper
Four games you print at home and solve around a table with pencils. Three are escape rooms, where each puzzle gives a word or a code that opens the next. The fourth is a cold case: a police file to read and argue over until you can say who did it.
Four games
Ages 8 and up · Christmas
6 puzzles and a final code at the North Pole, with a grown-up hosting. In color and as a coloring edition.
Read about the game: The Sleigh That Wouldn't Fly View on Etsy: The Sleigh That Wouldn't Fly (opens in a new tab)
Ages 12 and up · Christmas
6 puzzles in a Victorian counting house on Christmas Eve, and a street door with three letter locks.
Read about the game: The Three Visitors View on Etsy: The Three Visitors (opens in a new tab)
Ages 14 and up · 1 to 4 players
A 53-page police file from the night of the Great Storm of 1987. A hotel owner is dead. Work out how she died, who killed her and why.
Read about the case: The Storm Night View on Etsy: The Storm Night (opens in a new tab)
1 to 4 players per set · About an hour
7 puzzles in 3 acts for teens and adults. A carnival that vanished in 1927 is back for one hour.
Read about the kit: The Midnight Carnival View on Etsy: The Midnight Carnival (opens in a new tab)
With children under twelve, print The Sleigh That Wouldn't Fly. A grown-up hosts it, and the coloring edition saves ink and gives younger players something to do between puzzles.
The Three Visitors suits a Christmas party with teens or adults. All six puzzles are set at one Ages 12+ level, so nobody is left with an easy one while the others work on the hard ones.
For the rest of the year, The Midnight Carnival takes 45 to 60 minutes and has one host reading the hints. The Storm Night is slower, 1 to 2 hours, and nobody needs to host: everyone reads the same file.
Each game is a PDF download with an A4 file and a US Letter file. There is no app to install. Print the pages, sharpen a few pencils and put an eraser on the table.
Every game has a free companion page. Players type an answer and it tells them whether they are right, and the escape rooms give hints there one at a time when the table is stuck. Each kit also prints its hints or a sealed solution, for a table that would rather keep phones away.
The licence is personal use: print a game for your own family or party as often as you need, and do not resell the pages.
RiddlePortal also makes printable nonogram books: picture logic puzzles for one person, on paper or on an e-ink tablet. Five free puzzles are there to try first.