After touring a couple of vacated suites, we asked about the one we didn’t tour. “Suite 249? Oh…we don’t show people THAT space….”
“SHOW US.”
Tag: escape room design
The player journey is an outline of your experience. It walks through the show beat by beat strictly through the guest’s eyes.
The Magic Circle’s magic is less about money spent on mechatronics and more about dedication in design.
Backstory is not story, gossip is not drama, and information is not interesting.
If nothing changes in your scene, you have a wheels-spinning-in-place or slice-of-life bit that, unless you’re dedicated to some serious post-modern story-telling project, should be cut from the final edit.
In Bookends and Bottlenecks, I explored the structure Strange Bird Immersive uses to tell stories within the chaos of an
In Bookends and Bottlenecks, I explored the structure Strange Bird Immersive uses to tell stories within the chaos of an
Showing the inciting incident makes escaping, obtaining the McGuffin—whatever the game goal is—meaningful. Telling the inciting incident results in a conclusion that has no weight.
The Strange Bird secret sauce is this: don’t put story and puzzles in conflict! Separate the two in the structure of your game, and then you can deliver both elements to the team’s complete satisfaction. We call the concept “Bookends & Bottlenecks.”
Words matter. Not to dive too deep into linguistic relativity, but words shape our ideas. They give ideas boundaries. They