Behind the Scenes: Episode 5

A few years ago we created a custom escape game for a museum in Calgary: The Lougheed House. We arranged to meet with the client on site to learn about their needs: the messages they wanted communicated, their customer’s perceptions, everything. But this consultation had an unexpected twist that captivated our imaginations.

We were walking to our meeting place when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a huge safe. Like a kid in a candy shop I ran over to it and started to explore. Massively thick walls, incredibly heavy, iron wheels, had to be hundred years old. This was the real deal.

We quickly came to discover that it was donated to the museum but with a condition: the door was locked open.

Well, if that’s not a challenge waiting to be accepted! 

We asked permission and began to unscrew the back panel of the open door. Once the inner workings were visible, it was just a matter of turning the knob on the front back and forth until the plates inside the door aligned. Turn the handle. Open sesame.

We were able to reverse engineer the code to the safe and return it to its functional state.

MAKE IT REAL

This experience with “the safe” lodged itself in our imaginations and when planning Season 1 of Escape Mail, we hoped that we’d be able to include it in the narrative.

Thankfully, Caroline at the Lougheed House has been an absolute gem to work with, not just in Episode 5 but in Episode 9 as well!

More on that later in another blog post.

STORYLINE

The storyline of Episode 5 picks up where Episode 4 left off: JJ now has a map of the Castillo and has discovered where the library is. He’s inside, and he needs your help exploring it, discovering its secrets.

Experimenting with the folding mechanism of one of the puzzles using sticky notes at my desk. This is how most people use sticky notes to write messages isn’t it?!

He of course finds a safe, but that’s not all.

In the vein of interesting locked contraptions, we felt a cryptex would be appropriate too! In our experience with escape rooms we’ve found players loved opening the cryptex (we’ve run two different kinds, the metal one seen in this episode as well as a 3-d printed one for Tomb of the Pharaoh).

We felt the plot was ready for the historical angle to be introduced, so players become aware of Grandpa Alfred in this episode and set out on a journey to find his burial site.

PUZZLE COMPONENTS

What do you get in Episode 5? 

This is a photo of the first prototype on my kitchen table. A few improvements were made when we went to final print. All part of the process!

Escape Room Feel

We upped the video content. This includes JJ finding objects, needing help opening them, entering codes, etc. We tried to shoot something that felt raw and “real” - after all JJ is just a normal guy holding a phone. After this episode, we started hearing more from people that they wanted to “see JJ”. So this really marks the beginning of that trajectory for us.

Original Artwork

We tried a large-scale illustration. Some of our graphics are outsourced but this is one that I (Eric) tackled myself. It’s a collage of images that I tried to make all feel part of one cohesive whole. I was inspired by a book cover I saw a few months before and got a couple nice notes from a few of you saying how much you liked it :) thank you!

Digital Puzzles

Can’t have a library without some books! But since we can’t send multiple books in an envelope that weighs 30 grams we relied on some digital components to augment the experience.

Nostalgia

We have pretty strong memories from when we were kids about library borrowing cards (and not exactly adhering to the dates on said cards). So we stuck one of those in there for old times’ sake.

Texture

We own a book stamp. It’s a hand-press where you insert a page of your book and you are left with an embossed imprint of who the book belongs too. Not hard to see where the idea for the envelope came from :) And lastly, some actual torn book pages, which carry the bulk of the episode’s puzzles.

A QUESTION FOR YOU

I have a question for players: when you are playing one of our episodes, do you like it when you get to make inputs on the digital screen in a way that mimics real life… making you feel like you’re the one in the experience? Or do you prefer a more life-like and realistic input where you are telling JJ what to do? It’s probably more “fun” to rotate the knob and spin the dial, but on the other hand it’s probably more immersive to be giving instructions that feel life-like to another “person” who is really doing the action on-site.

Let us know what you think!

FINAL REFLECTIONS

I’m happy to say that Episode 5 was the beginning of a new style that would form the basis for the bulk of the remaining episodes. And while we would improve on this concept in future episodes, it nevertheless serves as a landmark for us on the creative journey.

Thanks for joining us, for commenting and following along. We hope these games delight and inspire you! Let us know your thoughts!