WEEK 1 – SET DESIGN AND BUILD TEAM

WEEK 1 – SET DESIGN AND BUILD TEAM

We are the set design and building group, so it is our responsibility to build all the physical puzzles come from the class and decorate the escape room to offer the players an immersive experience.

Our work relies heavily on the puzzles and the story to come out, so we did some general work in the first week.

First, we had the graduate lounge measured. There is a pole in the middle of the graduate lounge, so we also measured the distance from the pole to the walls.

We also asked our team members to share their weekly schedules online in order to figure out the weekly working time.

Also, last week we have figured out a time to meet with the writing and lobby design group and some people from the software and electronics team to decide on a general visual theme for the escape room project. Many people pitched their ideas through showing some pictures they found online.

Finally we decide to have our graduate lounge to be divided into two small areas according to Dean’s suggestion. The design of two rooms can make sure that players do not have too many clues and puzzles in hand at the same time. If there are too many things in sight at the very beginning of the game, players may have difficulty figuring out where to start, we do not want this especially in a 30-minute escape room. It does not only divide the space into two parts, it also divide the gameplay into two stages. Therefore we can avoid potential confusion. That leaded to another question, how we should divide the room. The room was later decided to be divided horizontally, which means there is going to be one northern room and one southern room. This pattern can avoid potential interference to the original illumination of the room. If we build the temporary across the pole, we can also get rid of the pole. Now the wood framework is done, part of the wall will be a sliding door and part of the wall will be a one-way glass. We liked the idea of one-way glass because one-way glass provide the feeling of one container room for the SCP and a lab where science people tried to study on the SCP. Also, one-way glass may also provide puzzle makers more inspiration. It should be a very impressive experience when players figure out how to open the slide door and be able to walk into the second stage and they find out that they were actually in a container room before.

After the wall is ready, we should have all the puzzles and the procedure of the escape room. For the work of next week, we are planning to set up some actual puzzles and clues in the room based on the flowchart of gameplay given to us. We have already planned the room layout according to one of Shano’s black light puzzle.