Finding the clues needed to open a locked chest is just one of the challenges players will face at the Lyon County Museum’s new escape room, museum director Jennifer Andries said. The escape room event, “Game Show,” will run periodically at the museum this summer and fall.

MARSHALL — Clues, puzzles and local history will all come together at a new escape room at the Lyon County Museum this summer. Area residents can play along with a game show created for the event, said museum director Jennifer Andries.

“It’s a trivia game with Lyon County history,” Andries said. But watching the show would be just the beginning of the escape room challenge, she said.

The new escape room, “Game Show,” will run periodically at the museum this summer and fall. Proceeds from the event will go toward the upkeep of the District 80 schoolhouse at the Lyon County fairgrounds, Andries said.

This isn’t the first time the museum has held an escape room event. Last spring, they offered a challenge with a story set in Lyon County during World War II.

“We were very successful last year, with the 1940s escape room,” Andries said. This spring, organizers wanted to build a challenge around displays of items and memoriabilia from area businesses. Once the display items were set up in the museum’s Heritage Room, they got to work thinking up puzzles and clues.

The game show that starts off the escape room challenge, called “Who Knows What?” was created through a collaboration with students from Southwest Minnesota State University. Andries said Marilee Thomas, a member of the Lyon County Historical Society Board, worked with SMSU students. The students designed, filmed and acted in a seven-minute game show video.

“It’s great to have that collaboration,” Andries said. It also gave the students a stake in the event, she said.

Groups taking the escape room challenge will start out by watching the game show in the Heritage Room. They’ll need to pay close attention for clues, Andries said. For some of the other puzzles in the challenge, “The clues they’re looking for are items in the displays around the room,” she said.

Andries said the artifacts in the Heritage Room display were good inspiration for different escape room clues and puzzles. When it came to designing the challenge, she said, “The biggest thing is kind of making sure there’s a sequence in place.”

Teams of up to five people can sign up for escape room time slots, at www.lyoncomuseum.org. The registration cost is $25 per team.

The funds raised by the escape room will go to help maintain the one-room schoolhouse at the Lyon County fairgrounds, Andries said. The museum hopes to be able to take on projects like putting new windows in the schoolhouse, she said. “That’s the next big step.”