Riddle Puzzle Prototype

This is a prototype for a riddle

Background

You are trapped and you need to open a door that is locked. There is a padlock with four numbers There are four numbers in the combination lock.

Riddle

Wait until I cool before you cut me
So many fingers it goes up to infinity
The letters of which you need less than three
The most important one being the letter T

Pattern Recognition Puzzle Prototype

This is a pattern recognition puzzle prototype.

Background

For the purposes of this puzzle, assume the player is to open a suitcase that is locked. There are four numbers in the combination lock. The player must extract the combination from the poem below.

Poem

Blank is the state of my mind
Blank is tomorrow’s headline
Blank is the air we breathe
Regardless I fancy a sneeze

Fear is the worst enemy
Remedy of peanut butter and jelly
For control the ultimate illusion
Nothing more than just a human

Tomorrow I will never know
Tonight we’ll make it a show
Slivers of hope, together, never apart
It resides here, at the depths of my heart

Virtual Escape Room Idea

This work is done through the collaboration of Martin Martin, Helen Zegarra, and Candy Yang.

The original goal of this class for me personally was to build an escape room that is fun and physical. Due to the fact that pretty much all of us are constrained to our apartments, we’ve decided that we want to build a single-player unsupervised online experience without a game master instead. This will enable the experience to exist permanently on the internet and practically anyone with a stable internet connection and a web browser can access it.

We brainstormed together and fell in love with the idea of having a narrative story that involves the use of an unreliable narrator. We think that this plot tool can be used to add suspense and excitement while playing. This is important to us because not having the user physically present at the site will create a situation where the user can easily give up on playing the game. However, after reading some material and having a discussion about it, we realize that putting too many red herrings in the plot tends to be offputting to the players.

So far, we’ve come up with this storyline:

  • The player is a private investigator hired by a lifesaving company to track down a thief who stole a secret formula. This secret formula is needed to start the production of a miracle life-saving drug.
  • After some investigation, the player will be able to track down the name of the thief. A series of puzzles will be played on this stage.
  • The player find the diary or notes of the thief after doing some hacking.
  • After reading the diary, the player realizes that this thief is an investigative journalist/reporter and the company that hired them is actually evil.
  • In the end, the player will be faced with a decision between good and evil.

Some more notes are available in this google drive link