Our team decided that our escape room theme would not be a typical horror escape room, but would have eerie, creepy vibes that make the players are curious and want to explore the space.
Moodboard
Spotify Playlist:
3 possible directions:
(Types of fun)
- If we are able to use two rooms for our escape room, I would love to include collaboration puzzles in our escape room. During the guest talk last Thursday, Laura Hall talked about how human interactions are what people remember the most after playing an escape room. Hence, I’m thinking of increasing the amount of memorable human interactions and fellowship type of fun through collaboration between the players. For instance, players could be split into two groups (rooms) at the beginning and they have to communicate information to each other to be able to complete some of the puzzles, and solving those would unlock the door that separates then.
- I also want to make sure that our room has the narrative type of fun element. Our guest speaker Laura Hall mentioned that people do not usually remember the narrative after playing an escape room, since they focus more on the puzzles and human interactions. From personal experience, I barely remember the narratives of the escape rooms that I have played. Therefore, I would want to make sure that our escape narrative has a memorable narrative. One way, like Laura Hall suggested, is to make sure the puzzles are connected to the narrative. Another idea that I have is to have a twist in our narrative that is really surprising and impactful to the players, and that is essential to solving one of the final puzzles.
(Narratives)
- One idea for the narrative is that there is a professor who is secretly a cult leader. The players are the students who go to the professor’s office for Office Hours. Because the professor is late, they look around the office and thus find out that the professor has weird meetings / objects. As the students keep investigating, they suspect more and more that the professor is some sort of cult leader. Then suddenly they hear footsteps approaching and they need to find some place to hide. Perhaps the twist at the end is that as they are hiding, they find out that the professor is actually an improv amateur. This narrative is interesting because it consists of an investigative stage, a time pressure / hiding stage, and a twist at the end, which is innovative for an escape room. It could also potentially involve a live actor.
- Another idea for the narrative, which is kind of similar, is that as the students keep investigating, they figure out that the cult professor’s plan is to kidnap students during his Office Hours. It turns out that the door is actually locked, hence the students need to find a way to escape the office before the professor comes back to use them as sacrifices in his cult practice.
