The Covid-19 pandemic and consequent lock down measures, disrupted our ongoing co-design of a mixed-reality escape room with grade 6 and 7 learners from a public school in Namibia. Consequentially, we launched into a remote participatory escape room narrative process with 10 learners reachable via mobile phones over a period of five months. Following a guided escape room narrative procedure we adapted activities progressively within an iterative approach of task completion, analysis, discussion and reflection. Student responses were analysed using Ekman’s emotion theory, to determine dominate emotions. We discuss how the prevalent emotions identified are to be guiding the final design of the narrative as well as the puzzles for an engaging mixed reality escape room experience. We further share our learning in accounting for technical as well as conceptual challenges in the remote interactions with the children considering the lack of resources as well as how the lock-down has affected the narrative design.