BEFORE YOU START...

TAKE NOTES Everything you need to enter this adventure is a computer with internet connection and a webbrowser of your choice. You do not need any special programs or knowledge. However, a piece of paper to take notes could be helpful - it is warmly recommended to note down all the codes that will cross your way.

TAKE YOUR TIME There is no time limit, so you can take a break at any time and continue later. If you are struggling to solve a task, you can do another one first and return later. It is however not possible to save your progress, but by bookmarking pages and keeping the passwords you can return to where you were before anytime.

DIVE DEEPER The game consists of main quests and side quests. The later one can be done if you want to find out more about certain topics and if you want to solve more difficult and more interesting riddles. After finishing the main quests, you will be able to download a certificate. Solving the side quests will unlock bonus content.

PLAY TOGETHER Play together with your friends: either together on one computer or online with a shared screen and voice- or video-chat - or you can even play competitively: start at the same time and you will see who finishes first. And: We know that it is easy to share the solutions for the quests with others once you finished them, but we kindly ask you not to do so in order to not spoil the game for everybody else.

FOLLOW THE LINKS The Escape Room contains some links to external webpages. Some of them just provide you with more background information, many are important for the story. So you are supposed to follow some of the links if you want to finish the game, but you will not be required to register to any page (you will especially not need to create an account for any of the social media webpages that are linked).
Some of the external pages are in English or in Slovak only, but it is sufficient to only speak one of the languages to solve this riddle - Slovak content in the English version and English content in the Slovak version is always just additional information and never required to absolve the challenge. So do not worry if you do not understand everything (or anything at all) in the other language.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Our organization Expression o.z. has been dedicated to young people for a long time because we believe that there is great potential in each of them. Therefore, we try to find ways to reveal their potential. We deal with various topics of personal development, experiential or non-formal education, but also volunteers both Slovak and foreign. This project was created under the auspices of our two international volunteers Sabine and Pierre. We are grateful to the European Solidarity Corps, which supported the project, for being with us for a year in Slovakia.

Information for students

In the flood of news that we face on a daily basis, it is not always easy to figure out which information is important and what is true, what is actual news and what is advertisement, deception or lies. Especially on social media, political organisations, criminals, trolls etc. try to spread fake news for their own advantage.
We want to show you methods of manipulation and how you can spot them to avoid being manipulated by these kind of news; we believe that it is important to form your own political opinion independently and without being influenced by false information.

We also want to show you some tools that you can use if you are looking for information online - we know ourselves that it is sometimes difficult to find what you are looking for and that valuable information is often hidden between nonsense.

And last but not least we wanted to prepare a challenging riddle for you to have fun and enjoy.

Information for teachers

This online riddle was created to educate about fake news and to enhance critical thinking in an online-context. We want to show the students methods of manipulation and how important it is to always stay critical when reading news online.
Another aim of the online riddle is to give tips for finding useful information in the internet and to show ways on how to effectively use search engines.
Social media is an important part of young people's lives - many spend a lot of time on platforms like Facebook and Instagram every day; so these channels of communication play a role in this escape room as well.

After a short introduction to the story, the students have to solve some tasks in order to get access to certain documents. There are four main quests, that deal with fake news, social media and doing research in the internet. They can be solved in 90 minutes. After finishing the main quests, it is possible to download a certificate of completion, including the name of the participant and the date.
The optional side quests go deeper into certain topics: data- and image-manipulation and how they can be used to deceive people, binary code and encryption and their importance for modern technology. Interested students can therefore gain more knowledge and can choose to deepen their understanding - and to solve some more demanding and interesting riddles.