Week 2: Writing and Lobby Design Team

After the surprisingly in-depth presentations given on Thursday, the writing team came together to divide this week’s work for each of us to work on individually. We also refined our plans for the escape room’s main story to better fit the projected puzzle path that was presented in class last week.

During class on Thursday, we split this week’s writing duties into three main categories. First, the main pages of the website. These pages need to be filled with a small blurb explaining the general plotline of this year’s escape room, along with short introductory paragraphs introducing the various teams building the experience. While this assignment allows for a bit less creativity than the others, it is still a vital part of the process; people probably won’t sign up for the room if they have no idea what it’s about. It’s important that we make sure everyone putting in the effort to make this year’s escape room the best it can be get the credit they deserve as well.


The second category of writing being done this week is supplementary website material. This contains more “in-universe” writing that won’t be viewable through the main website. Instead, this writing will require solving extra puzzles available in the marketing materials to find. In this writing, we can make more references to the original SCP website, but we still have to be careful not to copy their work exactly. We expect fewer people will read this, but those that seek it out will enjoy it greatly.


The third writing category is the lore that will be physically placed inside the escape room proper. Similar to the supplementary material, this work will be written from the perspective of individuals within the story of the escape room, and mainly exists for those who would like to read more about the story of our Definitely Not The SCP Organization. Compared to the supplementary material, the in-room lore has an additional complication of which we will have to be wary. Any additional writing we add to the escape room runs the risk of distracting puzzle solvers. As such, we will have to carefully strike a balance between setting the tone of the escape room and keeping our clients on the right track.


Earlier today, the writing team also noticed a slight issue with our current story. The original theory was that the puzzle solvers were passing through the containment of an anomalous entity, and that they had to make it through its chambers before time ran out or it would trap them with it. However, we realized this story has some issues, namely that because the players will ideally move through the room from one end to the other, the entity’s container has an exit that can be opened from the inside. Our current plan is to change the story slightly; now the chamber is an old containment room that is being used to test new employees before they get into the real work. This way the chamber makes more sense, and we can distance our escape room from the original SCP website a little more by not using one of their creations as the main antagonist. We’ll talk more about this change in class tomorrow, but we don’t expect it to have a major impact on the design of the room.