Artist Statement:
The Stanford Puzzle Gauntlet is a Stanford-themed puzzle escape room game. As Stanford students, we wanted to integrate the iconic campus of Stanford as much as we could into our broader goal of designing an escape room. As we began ideating around locations and moments in Stanford’s history that we could incorporate, we realized just how little we knew about our own campus! Out of this realization was born the underlying narrative of this game. Imagine…you’ve just received a notification that your admission decision has arrived from Stanford. You enter your username and password into Axess to check Stanford’s decision and…it says your password is incorrect? Instead, an ominous message flashes onto your screen: “‘You must complete these series of challenges to prove you’re truly as hearty as the Palo Alto” – an invested alum. The following puzzles are designed to test and expand your knowledge about Stanford’s campus and its iconic history. Complete it, and you earn your acceptance letter!
Enjoy playing a slice of Stanford Puzzle Gauntlet which contains the game’s first several puzzles (levels).
Target Audience:
When designing the Stanford Puzzle Gauntlet, we aimed to create an immersive experience primarily targeted at Stanford students. Participants are required to complete a series of puzzles—both digital and analog—in order to retrieve their account details. We incorporated a variety of puzzle types to appeal to a broader audience, ranging from physical elements (e.g., finding puzzle pieces in a geocaching-style challenge) to more stationary activities (e.g., playing a digital game in place).
The development of this game was inspired by a desire to create a more unified and engaging experience. It has the potential to be integrated into campus tours or orientation events, helping incoming students become more familiar with the university. Additionally, the game appeals to current students and can serve as an entertaining activity for a broader audience, such as convocation attendees, offering both enjoyment and a unique way to celebrate their time at Stanford.
While the current version includes Stanford-specific references, the game can be easily adapted for use at other schools or venues. For example, it could be customized for orientation events at different institutions or even modified for use in theme parks, transforming it into a location-specific experience that enhances guest engagement and exploration.
In terms of difficulty, we recognize that incoming Stanford students may find the game more challenging than students closer to graduation. This disparity is intentional, as it allows players to effectively choose their experience, whether as a comprehensive introduction during orientation or as a more relaxed, celebratory activity during events like convocation.
To improve accessibility, we have optimized the game for mobile devices. This not only enhances convenience during gameplay but also ensures that a broader audience can enjoy the full Stanford Puzzle Gauntlet experience from virtually anywhere.
We also considered players with red-green color blindness in our design. For example, in the puzzle that involves identifying the Hex code for Stanford’s official color (cardinal), we removed all colors entirely and presented the challenge in black and white. This ensures that all players, regardless of color perception, are on equal footing and can fully engage with the puzzle.
World building and Narrative
The story builds as players move through puzzles that gradually increase in difficulty, each revealing more of the game’s world. We use the physical geography of campus to pull players into the space and make the experience feel real. Having players walk through actual Stanford locations helps them feel more connected to the environment. On the digital side, we designed a fake version of Stanford’s Axess system that looks just realistic enough to be confusing at first. That weird, slightly off feeling catches people off guard and adds to the immersion. Everything from the layout of the puzzles to the art and mechanics ties back into this idea of being in a strange but familiar version of Stanford, which keeps the experience grounded, playful, and fully in-world.
Initial iteration of formal elements and values:
During the initial ideation of our game, we aimed to create a Stanford-themed exploration experience that combines the strengths of both digital and physical gameplay, particularly through a geocaching-style approach. The figure above illustrates the formal elements of our game design. From the outset, our goal was to develop a series of activities that span both analog and digital formats. In this design, the analog components serve a supportive role, enhancing player immersion and engagement throughout the experience.
Initial Brainstorming and Ideation:
As we were forming groups for this project, what originally brought us together was our interest in building some kind of escape room-style game that integrated physical and digital gameplay. A more specific idea that we tossed around was implementing some kind of augmented reality (AR) scavenger hunt, escape room, or capture-the-flag variant. A game that integrates AR into physical exploration well that guided our early ideation was Pokemon Go..
Given we’d be developing our game here on Stanford’s campus, we organically began thinking about how we could weave this setting into our game and overarching narrative structure. As a part of our early brainstorming, we each creating a moodboard for how we wanted our game to feel and three potential directions we could take our game.
Checkpoint 1 Moodboards & Ideation
Barney
- Narrative: One possible narrative direction would be set at the Cantor Arts Center on halloween. You are part of a group of friends that have wandered in the Cantor arts center after visiting the neighboring mausoleum (I vaguely remember there was an event that took place there before). They went into the museum as they thought they saw a ghost coming out of the mausoleum and went ot chase after it (paranormal ghost explorers). When you enter the museum, the door closes and you need to escape the museum within a time limit to escape the museum. To escape the museum you need to solve the mystery of Jane Stanford’s death (or some other mystery event on campus), figuring out the murder mystery will allow you to escape unscathed. There are a few possible explanations behind the ghosts death, but you need to track what is true and what is false to properly identify the murderer. To escape you need to solve a few puzzles to solve the mystery.
- Looking at the walls in the game to collect letter to type into a computer to get a key
- Looking at an information board and seeing a QR code that is ripped up into pieces at the bottom, you will need to piece it together to follow a link to get a hint.
- Rearranging portraits on a wall of previous Stanford presidents to open a secret door (this can be digital), associated hints can be found in print out books/flyers where they will need to stare closely for hints
- Put a fruit on the palm of a statute to get a recording of a hint
- Fun: Challenge, discovery, fantasy, narrative
- Narrative: Another possible narrative is to escape the classroom (the one we are in). The premise here is that you are a student that wants to undercover the details of the game that your parents made when they took the CS 247G. To do this you enter the classroom and decipher clues that have been left behind to figure out the game they made in the class. Hints will be scattered around Lathrop area or maybe just in the classroom.
- Puzzles can be similar to rearranging puzzle pieces or portraits to get a correct order.
- Fun: Challenge, discovery, fantasy, narrative
- Narrative: A final potential narrative or game would be you playing as a student that has stayed past closing time at Arrillaga after midnight breakfast. Suddenly the fruits and vegetables come to life and won’t allow you to escape the dining hall unless if you can beat all their puzzles/riddles in a given timeframe. The puzzles are similar to before, but maybe 10 puzzles or so, so that the game goes long enough. This game is more upbeat and less mystery doom than the other ones above.
- Some puzzles here can be food themed, like common foods served in the dining hall, finding out the secret ingredients for a dish to solve a puzzle. Figuring out when the dining halls on campus were built.
- Fun: Challenge, discovery, fantasy, narrative
Cole
- Narrative: You go to log in to axess to apply to graduate and yourcredentials aren’t working! You get an anonymous message saying your account’s been hacked. Stanford students nowadays don’t appreciate the history and beauty of our campus. To teach you a lesson, you have to scour the campus looking for clues and solve puzzles that will lead you to your sunet account details.
- Fun – explorative, time-crunch, team work (divide and conquer), augmented reality
- Format – physically explore campus, QR code placed somewhere at the significant location sends you to a mini puzzle that leads you to the next clue, maybe augmented reality elements
- Narrative: This narrative is similar to the first, however, the format would be more digital. This adaptation would still involve exploring the physical campus for clues to solve parts of this “escape room” esque game but for the digital component, it would be a replica of Axess where you’d have to explore the website to figure out what this nefarious actor has reset your account details to (think Binary Bomb without the assembly code / Tiny Rooms Story Mystery) where you have to find subtle clues, passwords, patterns within the website and within main quad to help you progress the narrative and gameplay of getting your sunet info back.
- Fun – reimagining a website historically not associated with fun and making it into the platform of our game!, physical exploration of campus, puzzle solving, teamwork, digital exploration, fun facts
- Format – physical exploration of the campus but a primary focus on the digital exploration of “axess”
- Narrative: A historical narrative framed as a scavenger hunt. The setting is the main quad of campus. There’s a list of niche objects you have to find within main quad to win. The game progressively becomes more challenging to find items and the hints (formatted as geocache drops at each object’s location is associated how to find the next. Each item is relevant to some historical moment in Stanford’s history such that each clue you look for relates to an incrementally older moment.
- Fun – exploration, learning more about the school you go to!, history?, solo exploration, or teamwork/camaraderie associated with working with multiple people
- Format – physical exploration and physical clues (maybe QR codes that link to an AR experience that projects an archive image of main quad/a slice of main quad from that time period. Or, when you think you’ve found the object, you take a photo of it and our app or website will tell you if that is in fact the correct location with the attached clue for the next location.
Jess
- Narrative: You’ve stayed after class, but something’s not right — the door locks behind you, and the only way out is to reconstruct a mysterious “lost lecture” by solving puzzles embedded in the room’s objects. Books, notes, and props contain the clues.
- Fun: Solving layered, interconnected puzzles
- Narrative Style: What happened here?
- Emotion: Tension + Curiosity
- Format: Physical escape room + digital elements (QR codes, audio, or webpage)
- Narrative: Strange messages have started appearing across campus — ghostly remnants of former students trying to communicate something forgotten. Players follow the trail through real Stanford landmarks (MemChu, Cactus Garden, etc.), uncovering puzzles rooted in campus lore.
- Fun: Exploration and discovery
- Narrative Style: Narrative Architecture / “What happened here?”
- Emotion: Wonder + Discovery
- Format: Campus scavenger hunt + QR puzzles + optional AR/audio
- Narrative: Your SU ID has mysteriously gone missing on graduation day. Without it, you can’t walk the stage. Scramble across campus solving puzzles to piece together clues and find it before the ceremony begins.
- Fun: Campus-based scavenger challenge with a time pressure
- Narrative Style: The Player’s Story
- Emotion: Playful tension + urgency
- Format: Puzzle race across familiar campus landmarks
- Narrative: It’s your last quarter, and you still haven’t done the Stanford bucket list! From fountain hopping to hiking the Dish, you’ll complete traditions, uncover puzzles hidden in each location, and reflect on what it all means.
- Fun: Exploratory checklist adventure + mini challenges
- Narrative Style: The Player’s Story + nostalgia
- Emotion: Curiosity + Sentimentality + Playfulness
- Format: Outdoor activity + puzzle integration + memory-making
Maya
High level puzzle format:
- Each landmark has a task (an in-app puzzle, or an offline puzzle set beforehand) to do to unlock the clue for the next task/landmark
- Snap a photo for verification
- Narrative: It’s the day before graduation, you get a notification from (enter Stanford admin name)that you haven’t submitted your application to graduate. Without hesitation, you run to the admin office to speak with the admin… You learn that you may still be allowed to graduate, but only once you have completed the tasks set before you!
- Enter Escape the Quad – Stanford Scavenger Hunt
- Memorial Auditorium: Match echoes from speeches (audio clips) to Stanford figures and events ( MLK, Dalai llama).
- Frost Amphitheater: Match 3 music tracks to the artist of iconic performances at Frost (Louis Armstrong, Grateful Dead, Clairo, Ella Fitzgerald)
- Fun: Challenge, Discovery
- Narative: You’ve been recruited by a mysterious secret society at Stanford to prove your worth by solving tests tied to campus history and culture. Once you complete all the tests you are offered a spot in this secret society.
- This would be more dark academia vibes compared to my moodboard
- Align tiles (real or digital) to form the Stanford seal and reveal a hidden motto. (Cognitive/Challenge fun)
- Fun: Challenge, Fantasy, Fellowship, Discovery
- A glitch in time has fractured Stanford’s historical timeline. Players must reconstruct key “memory fragments” hidden in campus landmarks to repair history and return to the present.
- Similar challenges and tasks in the hunt
- Fun: Narrative, discovery, challenge
The below photo is from the final ideation activity we did in class. At this stage, we still wanted the setting to be predominantly physical where each player would have to navigate the physical space of the main quad to find relevant clues and puzzles that were hidden. This idea is still core to what would be the final product of the Stanford Puzzle Gauntlet. However, being constrained to the classroom for most of our playtesting, it made more sense for our slice to reflect more of the digital side of our scavenger hunt.
Final ideation from class activity
The following section outlines the culmination of our individual brainstorming and aggregation of our ideas into the final idea that became Stanford Puzzle Gauntlet.
Overview of Final Game:
For digital elements, please refer to the computer demo link shown later in this post.
Stanford Cardinal Puzzle:
For this puzzle, players are instructed to enter the hex code of Stanford’s official color—Cardinal red. During initial playtesting, many players were confused by the format of the expected answer. To clarify this, we added a “#” symbol and a hint indicating that the answer should be submitted in hex code format.
To solve the puzzle, players are given a set of images and a Stanford-themed document. To increase flexibility and potential for replayability (beyond a one-time play experience), we intentionally designed multiple solution paths for obtaining the hex code. Players can begin with either the document or the images, ultimately arriving at the same solution.
The document focuses on the major achievements of Stanford’s first six presidents. Each paragraph highlights one president and contains a unique number—indicating their chronological order—embedded subtly within the text. These numbers are presented in a slightly different font than the surrounding text. Initially, the differences were achieved through italicization alone, but players struggled to distinguish them. Based on this feedback, we made several improvements: the font style, size, and underlining were all adjusted to make the numbers more distinguishable.
Additionally, players who closely examine the fine print at the top and bottom of the document—designed to resemble decorative document lines—will discover two hidden hints.
- Hint 1 explains the document’s contents and instructs players to reorder the presidential images based on the numbered sequence found in the text. When ordered correctly, flipping the images reveals a hidden message or the hex code itself.
- Hint 2 offers an alternate path, encouraging players to bypass the document entirely (if it proves too difficult) and instead focus on the images. By identifying numbers hidden within the visuals and arranging them in ascending order, players can still arrive at the solution.
This puzzle was purposefully designed to support multiple solving strategies. By offering various paths to completion, we reduce the reliance on facilitator hints and make the experience more accessible to a wider range of players. This flexibility is a distinguishing feature of our game. Unlike conventional puzzle games with linear solutions, our approach accommodates different learning styles and abilities—especially for those who may struggle with reading or text-heavy content. These design choices were directly informed by feedback and player behavior observed during early testing, particularly when players were left to navigate the puzzle without guidance.
If a player chooses to begin with the set of images—bypassing the paragraph-based puzzle entirely—they can still solve the challenge through a visual approach, which was intentionally designed for those who prefer visual over text-based tasks. In this path, players must reorder the images of Stanford’s presidents in chronological order. Players familiar with Stanford’s presidential history can rely on their knowledge to complete the task. For those who are not, each image contains a hidden number that indicates the president’s chronological placement. The images are presented in black and white to ensure accessibility for players with color blindness, particularly since many of the earlier presidential photos are monochromatic by default.
Each image includes a subtle hint to help players locate the hidden number. For example:
- In the Wallace Sterling image: “I am in the break in the foliage.”
- In the Ray Lyman Wilbur image: “I am on the desk.”
These clues guide players to the correct numbers, allowing them to arrange the presidents in chronological order. Once the sequence is correct, flipping the images reveals the hidden hex code for Cardinal red.
During playtesting, we observed that players had difficulty reading the initial small font size used for the hints and numbers. As a result, we increased the font size to improve readability and ensure a smoother gameplay experience.
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Formal Elements of the Game
Players: The game is designed for 1 to 4 players, ideally Stanford students or visitors, working together or individually to solve the puzzles
Objectives: Complete a series of digital and physical puzzles to recover your login credentials and unlock your Stanford acceptance letter.
Rules: Players must solve puzzles using clues from images, documents, and the environment. Hints become available after three failed attempts. The final goal is to input the correct answer into the Axess-style interface.
Resources: Players have access to visual clues, written documents, physical puzzle components, and their own devices. They can use the internet when specified.
Conflict: The challenge comes from figuring out how to interpret subtle or hidden clues, with minimal guidance. Each puzzle is intentionally a little strange or unexpected to keep players engaged.
Boundaries: The game takes place within a mix of virtual environments (computer interface) and real-world Stanford locations like the main quad and Lathrop. For the playable slice, the classroom stood in for the larger campus.
Outcome: Players either complete the sequence of puzzles and unlock the final screen showing their “acceptance,” or they fail to solve a puzzle and cannot continue without hints.
Iteration History and Improvements to Game:
Let’s break down the iteration history by playtest. For each playtest, we will summarize our insights from each session and link those to any changes we made to our game.
Playtest #1 5/6/2025:
Our first playtest was an experience prototype with our most basic prototype. We duped the Stanford Axess page, and when users would route to forgot password, they would be presented with a series of riddles that led them to pieces of paper with Stanford history questions on them. The answers to those questions would be the answers they would input into the computer to pass the level and unlock their acceptance letter. This experience playtest worked to test how engaging our narrative was, the integration of physical and virtual elements, and how we should scope the physical experience. We had low hopes about how engaging this would be, but in the end, this was a major success.
Insights:
- We could move forward with incorporating harder-to-solve puzzles and different kinds of puzzles without sacrificing engagement.
- We need to establish the confines of the game and decide on the exact magic circle
- Getting up and moving around enhanced the experience; we should keep this element a part of our game in some way
Playtest #2 5/13/2025:
For this playtest, we had a much more fleshed-out prototype, adding new and more difficult puzzles. We had the same narrative and start, but this time the players would have to solve 4 puzzles to recover their password: a virtual number hunt on a forgot password page, an image detection question, a physical mystery match presidents puzzle, and a music word scramble puzzle.
Here, our playtesters are working together to solve the virtual number hunt, the president’s puzzle, and the music puzzle. In the third photo, they had to get out a pen and paper to write out the potential combinations for the word scramble because they had to write the word in order on the computer.
Insights:
- The paragraphs in the document might have been too long, considering the clue in each of them was a single number. It gave way for the players to read into too many clue possibilities.
- The numbers were also a little too hidden, it needs to be made more obvious that these numbers are special (different font, etc.)
- For the number hunt page, we need to make it more obvious that they must investigate the page to find the number,s not just type in the numbers.
- Make the font bigger on the instructions under the question
Playtest #3 5/15/2025:
The only change this version made from the previous was making the instructions on the number hunt a little more obvious by increasing the font size. We found it important to get a few different playtests in with the same version of the president’s puzzle, considering there were multiple ways to solve the puzzle, allowing us to get the full range of players and see how they approach solving it.
Our playtesters are working to solve the president’s puzzle.
Insights:
- They loved the narrative but wished there was some reflection of it in the game so that when this runs without moderation, they would understand why they are solving these puzzles
- They gave us a great idea to make it look like an IT notice pop-up window to remain on theme.
- They felt like it would be hard to expect all the players to have a photo of Hoover Tower on their device
- This made us realize that we would have to specify that it is okay to use the internet to solve these puzzles, in this case, to download a photo of Hoover Tower to their computer. Most of them are built such that even if they know the answer, they still have to solve some sort of problem to be able to type it in.
- We had to give them a hint to look at the lines on the top and bottom to figure out how to solve this. Once they got that, it was smooth sailing.
- How can we incorporate this hint system into the game without giving away the answer?
Playtesting #4 5/20/2025:
This playtest adds our 5th and final grand finale puzzle. This level presents the player with 5 clues for 5 spots around the classroom/lathrop building where bags of the puzzle pieces are hiding. While assembling the stanford seal puzzle, we hope the players notice the letters written on the back of the pieces. Once the pieces are in place, uncover the secret code on the back. This puzzle added that physically active component that was so joy-sparking in our very first test, look at that smile!
Insights:
- After reading the question “What is the official color of Stanford University?” the players just tried to put cardinal, red, or cardinal red in right away without attempting to look at the president’s document
- They even tried to hack it by looking up the hex code for cardinal on the internet but this didn’t work because it is cardinal red
- This was our first encounter with more mischievous players
- Showed us that the president’s puzzle needs a hint system so that the players don’t try to cheat.
- After completing the game, they wanted to know how their performance fared against other playtesters
- This inspired us to think about adding a game summary screen, potentially with a leaderboard or percentiles of their time.
- They also thought it might be funny to record the person’s reaction to finishing the level, similar to how people record their reactions when they open their decision letters and display that in the game summary.
Playtesting #5 5/22/2025:
No major changes were made for this playtest. We wanted to do this one, but put a more intentional eye on the ways we need to incorporate a hint system.
Insights:
- We saw the same behavior where the players try to write in red or cardinal first while solving the president’s puzzle
- This inspired our hint system for this question, where, after three tries, a pop-up encourages the user to “look at the lines in the doc to put together the (hex)code”
- A more logistical problem, the puzzle code was case sensitive when it shouldn’t be.
- They really liked the riddle and running around
- While our first puzzle playtesters pretty seamlessly flipped over the first puzzle, this group had a lot more trouble. Although they could have just taken the puzzle apart one by one and flipped over the pieces
Playtesting #6 5/27/2025:
This playtest incorporated the new hint system with the president puzzle hint and the word scramble hint. Other than that, most things stayed the same; we were in the refinement stage at this point, making sure we were paying attention to any sticking points.
Insights:
- When it came to the puzzle piece hunt, the players kind of just sat there and read the clues, not realizing they had to get up and walk around to solve the puzzle
- We need to add some verbage to the instructions that tell the users to get up and go find the pieces associated with these clues
- We wanted to refine the design of it and make it more exciting, they had a few suggestions.
- Adding in artist photos – we decided against it because we wanted it to be musical recognition, only mimicking you standing outside of Frost trying to figure out what concert is happening that night
- Keep incorporating the axess formatting throughout
Playtesting #7 5/29/2025:
For this playtest, we finally incorporated our reaction video and game stats page. This was definitely well-liked amongst our playtesters and got a laugh out of them when it showed up. Other than that, our game was in pretty good shape; this playtest was a final rehearsal before the final playtest.
Insights:
- These playtesters used the third way to solve the president’s puzzle, by looking at the numbers hidden in the photos. This was the first group to go in this direction from the start.
- They used Shazam for one of the artists, which is smart out-of-the-box thinking! We didn’t take this into consideration too much, though, because the questions are literally multiple choice.
With all these playtests and iterations between we arrived at our final product that was played on June 3rd in class. We consider our MVP to be a fully built-out slice of a larger Stanford puzzle gauntlet game. Each level would have different themed dilemmas with different campus locations and corresponding puzzles tied to them.
Final Playtest Video: 6/3/2025
Computer demo:
Github:
