Category Archives: Gaming
An Escape Enthusiast Abroad: Netherlands Summary
Welp, that’s that. I went on my first European trip and did not die in a plane crash/got lost down an alley/got run down by a bike.
I’m STILL letting the whole experience sink in, but here is my best attempt at summing up the whole trip.
I also did not fall into a canal like this car is about to… seriously, are railings are impossible?
European Escape Rooms
If this trip taught me anything it’s that I need to experience more escape rooms around the world. It’s really interesting to see the trends and habits of the most successful escape rooms worldwide.
From what I have seen of European escapes, the focus is far more on making an immersive experience. The innovation I saw happening with the pre-game experience with games like The Vault and The Catacombs is the kind of thing I would love to see more of in the escape games of Canada.
Even when we were stuck on a potential tech problem, the GM/actor did everything in their power not to come in and interrupt our experience. They wanted us to have as smooth a process as possible and I appreciated the effort.
This is just more opportunities to post pics of friends
The sound and light design were some of the best I have seen. It was not just there to provide atmosphere. It also provided subtle signposting to guide us along the way. There was usually a narrative reason for a sound to appear, and the player would be rewarded later if they were paying attention.
I also liked seeing how endings were treated. In the better games we played, every player got an ending, regardless of win or loss. Both endings were satisfying even if they were not happy. I really wish I saw more of that in future escape rooms.
On the flip side, I did notice the puzzles tended to be on the simpler side since they had to fit more naturally into the environment. This is not a bad thing. They still made sense and were all logical and enjoyable. It’s just something I observed. It’s a topic I know is beginning to be discussed in the enthusiast group. I’ll be curious to see if challenging puzzles in an immersive game are possible.
I realize the majority of the escape rooms I played in the Netherlands were cherry picked from the best. I am aware there are bad escape experiences in the country as well. I am also aware of the amazing experimentation that is beginning to happen in the US and Canada (Strange Bird Immersive, Escape My Room and Secret City Adventures are three that immediately spring to mind).
But the one thing my continent does not seem to have is that atmosphere of creative focus. When I spoke with owners in Europe, I rarely heard talk of business practices. I only heard ideas and recommendations for similar escape rooms nearby. There is not nearly the competitive streak that I see in North America. It was very refreshing.
There are theories flying around about why European games are so elaborate. Personally, I think they are getting past the point of being marketed mostly toward the newcomer who “will have fun no matter what”. The initial phase of a fun new form of entertainment is ending and designers are beginning to see how they can make satisfying experiences as well as a successful business. North America is getting there, but it might be another couple of years.
Lessons as a Narrative Designer
I have now designed the narrative for three large scale theatrical escape events. Prison Escape was the first time I got to experience such an event from the player perspective. I am so glad I did.
I have put this here because of the advice I read in every book about video game narrative: if you want to write games, play games. Understand what makes them work, take note of where you are frustrated, take note of where you feel joy.
Prison Escape attempted something I have been far too afraid to undertake: multiple storylines. I do not envy anyone who has to design that and I really admire them. Some storylines were constant, hair raising adventures. Others felt somewhat tacked on and resulted in a disappointed player.
The actors were great!
It made me realize how difficult it is to provide a consistent experience to every single player of a large scale event. It makes me wonder if it is possible. I did have fun in the end, but I knew other players who did not. It made me wonder about my own events and what I could do to improve them. So I am happy to have walked away with so much to think about.
Up The Game
This was my first time attending Up The Game. It is the second official escape room conference I have been to (third if you count the Unconference). It is by far my favourite so far.
Speaking with others, I feel like there are three different experiences:
The first are for those who attended last year and were returning. In general, they seemed to have enjoyed last year’s content more but did enjoy the talks and to reconnect with friends old and new.
The second was for people like myself who were attending for the first time. Most of the talks were about theories we already knew of but it was refreshing to be in a room of like minded individuals and satisfying to see practical examples to back up the theories. Occasionally we would attend a talk which introduced ideas we had not thought much about yet but for the most part it was reaffirming what we already believed.
The third and final group were newcomers who were also new owners. These were the attendees that benefited most from this year’s conference in my opinion. When I spoke with them, they were wide eyed and brimming with inspiration and ideas. Most of the talks were on topics they had rarely considered in their designs. These were the most fun people to talk to at the conference.
Yes, there were organisation problems. We often did not know where to go to register. Our lunch vouchers only covered one drink and it was very warm. The activities booked up too quickly before most could take advantage of them.
But these are nitpicks in what was largely an incredibly positive experience for me. Up The Game is the most important escape conference I have been to. The talks going on here are the ones necessary to further this industry beyond just another fad. If you get a chance next year, I would highly recommend trying it out.
If I were to do anything different, I think I would put a couple of more talks focusing on puzzle design and tech. Much as I love immersion, escape rooms are like theatre. There are a lot of wheels and cogs required to make them work so it’s good to have a balance.
If I were to talk about story again, I would also want to focus on something more specific. We have had the generic “story is important” talk many times now. Up The Game seems like the perfect place to start to focus on specific topics like the pre-game experience, player roles, non-player roles, flow, climaxes, hint systems, and so much more.
With that said, thanks so much to everyone who read! It was fun to chronicle my journey! Thanks to all the friends, new and old, who let me join them on escape and for all the awesome conversations during and after the conference!
Most importantly, thanks to the folks at Up The Game for organizing this! It is not easy to run such an event and it was well done! It also prompted me to finally get up off my butt and actually travel outside my country. I hope you are all getting sleep!
I know I am. I am a big jet lag wimp. Until next time!
Sad Manda is sad to leave.
An Escape Enthusiast Abroad: The Netherlands Day 5 & 6
After Thursday I could barely find time to sit down and actually write the blog. And if there was time, I opted for sleep instead. So I decided to finish off my trip in one fell swoop when I got back!
Here we go!
Day 5
Canadian Bumpkin Status- Skyrocketed To 200%
I experienced my first real travel anxiety attack. We were running a bit late and suddenly all the possibilities of all the appointments and travel deadlines I would miss and the unfamiliarity with the country I was in came in at me in one overwhelming swoop. I became a silent, worried mess. Thankfully it’s good to have friends around who will shove you in a cab so you can get to your AirBNB and tell you things will be fine. Things were fine.
Also, friends who do all the planning are awesome. Thanks Lisa of REA!
I learned in the Netherlands that cars will stop for people but cyclists will not. The cyclists are mad with power.
There is no such thing as a cheap meal in Europe. However there is no tipping so I think it sort of works out in the end.
Amsterdam is lovely. I want to live on a houseboat but it is 1.2 million euros to live in one.
Canals are so cool!
I want a houseboat!
The European transit system is amazing. The buses seem to come every five minutes and you can pay your fare with your credit card instead of standing awkardly with not quite enough change. And they have paper tickets you can tap on an electronic reader! I gawked at it like the bumpkin I am for a full five minutes.
Every person I came across in Breda warned me of pickpockets in Amsterdam. I tried my best to put on my “I don’t care about your life” Toronto face and walk confidently down the street while at the same time discreetly glancing at the precious blue line on my map which would tell me where to go. I was not pickpocketed but I don’t think it was due to my attempted ruse.
I realize that before GPS we used these things called maps. I am glad I did not have to read a map myself but am secretly glad there was no way I could get lost.
Speaking of which, I missed the straightforward gridlike structure of Toronto streets. These medieval streets were pretty but lacking in all logic or sense.
We went to the strangest, hippest Thai restaurant/clup called Chin’s Club (or something like that). It had a wall of waving cats, Nintendo decorations, rude waiters and expensive hip food.
The wall of cats should have been our first warning…
I discovered kroketten. They are meat mixed with gravy/flour deep-fried in batter and wrapped in bread. They were the best Dutch food I had.
I got propositioned. Twice.
The Escapes!
On to the important stuff! Which Escapes did we do?!
Friday I was travelling with David and Lisa of REA and Juliana of Escape Room in a Box! The first stop was a beachside town called Zandvoort to visit Escape Room Zandvoort (note: we would have easily stayed in that town just to hang on the beach for a week).
We did two rooms there: The Boat Trip and The Goldmine. Since Lisa and David were doing these rooms and we all gave our thoughts afterward I will let their reviews speak for most of my thoughts.
They were fun, but they did remind me of a lot of other Canadian rooms puzzle and set design wise. These were not the fabled Netherland experiences I had heard so much about. However they were still mostly solid and did have some fun tech elements I have not seen in Canadian rooms all that often.
They had the best photo
After that we rushed to Amsterdam and did Boom Chicago. The room was movie themed and did some neat things with the space Again, since David and Lisa also did it with me I would read their review since we all had the same thoughts on it.
Then there was Sherlocked’s The Vault.
Oh man. The Vault.
I was not originally going to do this room. The main reason was my lack of an available team (the secondary reason is heist rooms make me nervous ). My friends seemed to have already done or were doing it at times I was not available.
Then lo and behold who should message me but a complete stranger who was looking to do it that very evening! It turned out it was a newlywed couple on their honeymoon who had booked the room only to later learn they needed a minimum of four. They joined the enthusiast group with the express purpose of finding someone and were shocked at the number of potential players currently in the Netherlands (they had no clue there was a conference going on)
Because I was in the midst of my travel freakout I waffled on actually going, but David said that I of all people needed to play this room. I am so glad I did.
The Vault is by far in my top 5 escapes of all time. THIS was the experience I had heard all about. From the moment you book the room, the focus is all on immersing the player into the world of the game. You do not even walk into an escape room upon arrival. You are texted a location to go and meet your contact.
From that moment it felt like I was in a movie. That feeling remained throughout the escape. The combination of actors, narrative, lighting, set, sound and puzzles all made for a fantastic experience.
There was one element toward the end though that almost took me out of the experience. I hesitate to call it a tech failure but that’s probably the closest term to what occurred. The most I can say was that physical brute force was absolutely necessary. I had been warned about this aspect ahead of time and I’m glad I was. Most of the players I have talked to who completed it also had complaints about this part of the game. If they tweaked just this element, it would be a near perfect experience.
We all got pins as well! The newlyweds are on the left.
Still! Go play Sherlocked’s The Vault if you get the chance! It is an unforgettable experience.
Day 6
Most of Day 6 was Introvert Tourist Day! Again, I was a bad enthusiast but having never traveled I think I made the right call by booking alone time throughout my trip just to take in the sites.
Canadian Bumpkin Status- Tacky Tourist
I wen to the Anne Frank House. I hate to say something like “I enjoyed it” about such an experience, but it was an important museum I wanted to see and although it was sad I am glad I got to see it. I am even more glad the museum gift shop consisted only of copies of the diary. I seriously dreaded what kind of stuff might be there.
I ate a Dutch pancake. It was apple bacon. It was amazing. The syrup however was not. It was thick and tasted odd to me. I missed maple syrup.
So much delicious
The Dutch seem obsessed with being American. There were always American options on the menus or American roadhouse style restaurants all around.
I went on a canal cruise! It was a beautiful day and a lot of locals were on the water. Their boats had really comfy seating and space to put their food and drinks. The people of Amsterdam know how to live.
I stopped by a tack tourist booth and bought tacky tourist magnets. In Toronto I laughed at tourists who bought Canadian souvenirs. Now here I was…one of them.
I ate Indonesian food which I was told was really good in the Netherlands. My friends were right.
I spent my last few coins taking tacky tourist pictures like this one. Gotta support local artists?
I went full Canadian bumpkin when our Dutch friend suggested we sit somewhere illegal to have some drinks (or at least just somewhere the public aren’t supposed to go). I was practically stamping my foot in panic. They relented to my cowardly/law abiding ways and we sat by the canals. I assured them that were it an escape room, I would be one of the first over the fence. Maybe.
I was also weirded out by drinking alcohol so freely out in the open on the streets. I quickly got over that.
Escapes!
There was only one escape for Day 6: Logic Logiclocks’ The Catacombs.
This. Was. Terrifying. And awesome. Awesomely terrifying.
This game appealed to me even moreso than the vault because of my love of ghost stories and horror. And boy did it deliver. Much like the Vault, the pre-game experience seemed to be just as integral to the game as the escape room itself. Also like the Vault, which was housed in a real bank vault, the Catacombs was located in a real church catacombs.
Sure…I will go into that dark pit of doom…
I played this game with my new British enthusiast friends Sera and Sharon. The game designers dialed back the jump scares a bit due to the fact that Sera has a heart condition. It was pretty easy to see where they would have appeared though and I appreciated that even with the jump scares they would have used them sparingly.
What the room did really well was slowly ratchet up the tension and creepiness with small, well placed scary moments. They do what horror does best: let the players fill in the gaps with their own imagination and let the fears fly!
And fly they did. Sharan was the brave superstar of our group, and we readily sent her into the most terrifying situations of the room. This backfired a couple of times when the two scared people of the group suddenly found ourselves alone in the room with no brave player to protect us. It all worked out though.
Sharan is the one laughing at our cowardice on the right.
Again, it felt like a movie. I felt like a paranormal investigator in over their head. The actor was probably one of my favourite actors of all the escape rooms I played that week. The energy he brought just completed the experience.
It all came to a huge climatic ending that of course I won’t spoil. I mention it though (and Sherlocked’s the Vault) because these rooms have something a lot of escape rooms here lack: a satisfying ending for a lose state. Not every team will win, but every team will get an ending that at least feels just as complete as if they had won.
The Catacombs also had something that I do not see enough of (to be fair, I have not played as much as some enthusiasts): they managed to use subtle environmental storytelling and weave it into the puzzles.
Subtle sounds we had heard throughout the experience at first seemed like just great ways to scare us. But they also held important clues for later puzzles. At the same time, the sounds were not beating us over the head with meaning. When the puzzles eventually appeared later, the aha came to us organically. It was really nice, little touches like this that launched this game into my top 5 as well.
I did not realize while playing, but the Catacombs is a scored game. Some of the scoring depends on how closely you have been paying attention to the narrative. I had not seen that done anywhere in scored escape rooms before. It usually just depends how many puzzles you complete and how fast you solve.
Best of all: this game had credits at the end! Credits! That named everyone involved! I really wish more escapes did this!
It was such a great way to end my time in The Netherlands. Afterward my friends and I bought a bottle of wine and drank along the canals nerding out about escape rooms. It was the perfect conclusion to the whole trip.
Fun new friends!
Stay tuned for my final summary and thoughts on European escape rooms!
An Escape Enthusiast Abroad: The Netherlands Day 4
Now that the conference is over, it’s time to focus my rapidly dwindling energies on my very first European escape rooms!
There were offers to do some escapes in Rotterdam for the day, but three days of non-stop action has finally been catching up to me. I decided to be a bad enthusiast and use the day to chill and explore a little more of Breda before the Prison Escape in the evening.
I am glad I did it! It’s been wonderful meeting so many people but talking takes a lot out of me. It was nice to meander through the city center and try out whatever I came across.
These things included:
A park with random chickens and roosters.
A castle that was sadly not open.
A dollhouse/miniature museum! It was really crazy!
Look at these tiny books! Good thing it’s not an escape.
A begijnhof, which was a sort of convent/cloister for a group of women who were not really nuns but wanted to live the lives of nuns. There was some neat history there.
Canadian Bumpkin Status- Back up to 80% thanks to my crappy Dutch and a woman scaring me with stories of pickpockets in Amsterdam
As predicted, I have quickly abandoned any Dutch I learned and have switched to English. It’s easier on all of us. It has driven me to want to learn more though. Still, I feel bad to abuse my English privilege.
The walk signals at traffic lights emit quick machine-gun like sounds when it’s safe to cross. This prompts me to try and dash across as fast as I can.
Tipping is not a thing. Or maybe it is? Sometimes if I say nothing the waiters just give me the bill and tell me the price and I silently hand them my credit card. If I reveal my Canadian bumpkin status, they tell me the space I can use if I want to add “extra”. I always add extra. It feels weird not to.
I have discovered that buying a coke is the same price as buying a beer here. The Netherlands is turning me into a beer drinker purely because it’s more cost effective.
I am going to have a difficult time readjusting
The roads in Breda are a medieval design, which means it’s mostly pedestrians with a few bikes and scooters racing by followed by the occasional car that just tries to clear a path for themselves through the crowds. My weirdest moment came watching a car drive through followed very closely by children on roller blades.
And now! The Prison Escape!
Prison Escape
Well, that was an experience.
For those that do not know, the Prison Escape is a large, theatrical interactive escape experience that involves being incarcerated in an actual prison.
Waiting with my inmates.
The project is insanely ambitious. It involves 80 actors, usually 400 players (in our game it was only the 100 from the conference), and multiple storylines that are impossible to see in one playthrough. The setting of the Prison Breda dome only increased the immersion factor. So I really appreciate all of the work that went into it.
The beginning worked well to get us into our roles as inmates. The guards made sure we knew our place. In fact, most of the first hour was spent simply being integrated into the system: receiving our bades, our prison uniforms, being led from one line to the next and finally meeting our warden.
Our warden. He was a little too good at his job
Admittedly, I felt bad for those that arrived first. They had to stand in a silent line and wait for the rest of the players to get ready. From what I heard, that aspect grew tedious.
We were then randomly placed with our cell mates (mine ended up being David Spira…so not so random). And then the game began!
I’m obviously not going to reveal many of the details of my playthrough of my time behind bars. My overall experience amounted to a lot of wandering around lost interspersed with moments of tense fun.
Listening to other player stories, there seemed to be some inconsistency in the experiences. Some players found every single minute to be packed with excitement. Some players started out strong but then ended up with nothing for the second half. Some players, like myself, spent much of the first half either figuring out what to do or performing somewhat pointless tasks and then having a really exciting second half.
There were instances where it sounded like the other players were doing very interesting things while I simply waited in my area for something to do. Sometimes when I volunteered for a task, it led nowhere. Finally, I managed to get a task that led to a really fun interaction with a prison guard.
A couple more of the awesome actors!
The ultimate goal was to escape and luckily I succeeded. I ended up being swept up in one of the plots and the ending was a very satisfying one that made for some great stories. I kind of wish my entire experience had felt like that. The general consensus was if you did not manage to get on a good storyline fast enough, you were pretty much doomed to watch other players have more fun.
I think what was frustrating for the losing teams was that they did not get an ending of any sort. A team does not need to necessarily succeed to receive a satisfying ending. Fail states are something I would actually love to write about someday.
Overall though I still had fun and would recommend. In fact, I think I would play it again now that I know how it works. I liked there were multiple paths you could take depending on what clues you found early on. I liked the interactions I did manage to have with the actors. I LOVED my ending. I just think there were aspects that could be tightened up.
Having run similar events in Toronto, I know how insanely difficult it is to plan out player flow on such a large scale. The fact that the team mostly managed it with multiple story endings is impressive. I love seeing an escape company trying such new and big things. I will be interested to see what they come up with next for sure.
In the meantime…my feet are sore…prison floors are hard.
An Escape Enthusiast Abroad: The Netherlands Day 1
Back in February I decided it would be a grand idea to attend the Up the Game conference taking place in the Netherlands in May. I have never really travelled far outside my country and I can think of worse reasons than an escape room conference!
My friend Errol suggested I write a daily blog on my adventures experiencing the escape rooms of the Netherlands! I thought it was a splendid idea! Then I spent 10 hours flying, 2 by train, and jumped ahead 6 hours from my normal time zone. I am crashing to say the least.
I am still determined to plow ahead! So below is a report of things I have learned so far :D.
Day 1:
Flying– It’s awesome. It’s also incredibly nerve wracking. It turns out all the sounds a plane makes while taking off are the same sounds a video game makes when everything goes wrong. So my nerves were a bit frayed by the time we went above cloud level.
But then I got to see the wonder that is being 33,000 feet above EVERYTHING and most of my nerves were forgotten. I think I hogged the window the entire flight. I only felt slightly bad.
Look how pretty!
Jet Lag- It is my first time going so far into another time zone and thus my first time experiencing jet lag. Naturally I had no idea what I was in store for. I have slept 3 hours out of the last 20 and my body does not seem to quite know what to do with itself.
My friends however seemed impressed I was functional. I credit my friend Mike, who advised me to eat at local times in order to trick my body. It seems to have worked so far. I am still very tired am at least coherent and know where I am. Starting to crash though.
Me right now.
The Enthusiast Community
I do have to say, it barely feels like travelling alone when I have so many escape enthusiasts from the community to hang out with for this conference. Today it was Juliana and Ariel, creators of Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment, Ariel’s husband Mike, fellow enthusiast James Cobalt, and his partner Salem. They made the journey that much more enjoyable.
Also, they give rides. In a Tesla. Rides in a tesla are awesome.
It’s like a space ship!
Escape Rooms Played
As soon as I was off the plane, I rushed off to play my first two escapes (all I have seen of Amsterdam so far is part of a train station). Today was Escape Nederlands, the first escape room to be opened in the Netherlands!
We played two games:
The Lab– This was the very first room to appear in the Netherlands, so it felt pretty cool it was also my first escape room to experience in the country. This goes for both rooms but it has been some of the most solid tech I have ever seen. EVERYTHING was perfectly timed.
The puzzles may not have been perfect but if this is the room that is considered “Gen 1” in the Netherlands, I am soooo excited to see what the newer ones are like.
Girl’s Room: I could really see the progression from The Lab with this room. It blew the first one out of the water in my opinion and made for a more cohesive experience. There were a few Ask Why’s that we nitpicked afterwards but over all it was an awesome experience.
Happy enthusiasts!
Also, both rooms were scary. I screamed. A lot. I was quite useless. Errol would have laughed at me. I was glad he was not there.
The customer service was some of the best I have experienced. The GM was nice and chatty with us. It was one of the most impressive lobbies I have seen in a while. They even had a self serve bar!
Look at all the fun drinks! And this was just the tip of the ice berg!
I was bummed their new room, The Dome, wasn’t ready yet. They have been working on it for two years! If I manage to make it back, I will definitely have to play.
Okay, I am actually about to collapse. Until tomorrow! And by tomorrow, I mean the first day of the UP THE GAME CONFERENCE!
Escape Room Narrative: Exposition Part 3
And now we get into some of the more involved escape room exposition tools. Super exciting times! (said the nerd) Read the rest of this entry
Escape Room Narrative: Exposition Part 2
There are many ways to introduce an audience to a story. Mediums are not limited to any one method although there are usually a couple that are most effective.
Escape rooms are still going through some growing pains. Like video games, they are an interactive experience. Unlike most story heavy games, escape rooms have a set time limit, making it next to impossible to allow players the leisure to discover the story by interaction alone.
So what DOES make an effective exposition for an escape room? Let’s take a look at some of the methods currently used, the pros, the cons and how they can be taken to the next level. For consistencies’ sake, I am going to look at all of these methods using one of the most common escape room themes: The Mad Doctor/Scientist.
The Odyssey: Learn through reading…in a game!
Educational games are hard. Like…exceedingly hard. I’m not talking about playing. I am talking about designing. Growing up in the 90’s, I was subjected to many “edu-tainment” games.
Most of these were on a scale between “boring failures” (Treasure mountain and that animation math game I failed a test for on purpose just so I could stay in for recess to answer multiplication questions to gain access to animation) and “Fun but rarely actually taught me anything” (Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Cross Country Canada).
I learned that Paris has the Eiffel Tower, see?!
A rare few were somewhat more successful, such as Egypt II The Heliopolis Prophecy which let the environment and the characters speak for themselves instead of pausing to give a history lesson…most of the time.
Taking the cake of all of these was the Nancy Drew series, which so far have combined learning about a different culture, science or history with fun detective hijinks. They are by no means perfect but have been a source of immense entertainment, especially given that I only discovered them in my 30’s.
I learned about Japanese ghosts! Worst/best day ever!
I have been eagerly awaiting the next chapter in the Nancy Drew series for the last couple of years or so. Each time I scour the website there is no news to be seen. Imagine my delight when I discovered Her Interactive partnered with a company called The Young Socratics to make a game entirely about discovering the very foundations our modern science is based on.
Okay…so let’s talk The Odyssey.
You, the unnamed and I can only assume amazing protagonist, have picked up a distress call from a remote island in the Caribbean once home to pirates, WWII soldiers and…others, I am sure. The distress call is from a 13 year old girl named Kai. She is certain some not so trustworthy sailors are going to attack and needs your help. You will need to find her and her family but first you must navigate the myriad of safeguards the family has erected to protect themselves from intruders…all based off ancient sciences. ‘Natch.
The Odyssey is aptly named. Not only are you learning about the journey ancient scientists embarked on in their attempt to understand the world, you are also viewing the journey of Kai who is attempting to understand the world around her without the aid of Google to tell her why things work the way they do.
On that level, I admire Odyssey. Here is a child who has almost nothing handed to her. If she has questions about the world around her, her father insists she work it out for herself rather than simply tell her what today is considered common knowledge. Why is the earth round? Is it the centre of the universe? How do you prove that with no space ships to help you see? And so on…
But…that is about where the admiration ends.
I really wanted to like this game. I did. But 70% of Odyssey…is journal reading.
So. Much. Journal. Reading.
Aaaagh
And this is coming from someone who normally loves reading journals in her adventure games.
The game is structured as follows: you traverse a certain amount of space. You come across a box. You open a box. You find a series of journal pages. You read them, making note of the yellow highlighted passages which will no doubt serve to help solve the next puzzle. You follow a coloured cable from the box to a station of some sort where sits a puzzle. Based on the journal entries you have found you solve the puzzle. Wash. Rinse. Repeat 50 times
There are two problems with the journal reading:
One is a practical problem. Not everyone learns the same way. Those who learn by reading the written word could easily get this information from a library book rather than spend additional funds on a game. That poses a problem when your medium is one that promotes other types of learning: listening, observing, physically experimenting. I found myself reading those in-game journals over three or four times until I finally grasped what they was trying to tell me.
Eventually it got to the point where I was simply skimming the journals until I saw the relevant highlighted sentence that would tell me how to do the next puzzle. Guilt caused me to go back afterward and read the entire entry.
And then I would ponder the luck this kid has to have the materials/engineer parents to make these contraptions
And yes, I realize I am a woman in my 30’s having difficulty grasping basic scientific concepts. But that’s the thing. I don’t do my best learning by reading. I absorb a lot more by listening and demonstrating. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with learning by reading.
But this is a game. It’s an interactive medium. Players of a game learn through physically experimenting with the environment. They observe. They listen. They play. Reading vital information in a game should be minimal and used wisely, especially in this day and age. Odyssey depends on it.
The other problem is a much larger one: you are not on an adventure. You are reading about the adventures and experiences of another character. Even though you are learning alongside a character through her journals, it is still very much her experience.
At least I got to walk on the pretty island.
I do not want to read about someone else’s adventure. I did not want Kai to tell me how thrilling science was. I wanted to experience it for myself. I wanted Kai’s father to be questioning me. I wanted to be the student.
The glimpses of understanding I had throughout the game were satisfying enough to make me think about the history of the scientific process, but at the same time made it more frustrating. Each of those glimpses showed me what promise this game had. It showed me the creators are passionate about their subject matter. It made me want so much more than what Odyssey offered.
Is it possible to have an educational game in which you make discoveries not through scouring journals, but through your own observation, experiments and a teacher by your side? A teacher who guides rather than lectures?
The truth is I do not know if it is actually possible.
It is a shame. The idea of learning about the history of science without the aid of Google or really any modern technology is so ambitious and interesting. But it is not truly experienced by the player. It is instead experienced by an off screen character. I hope she had more fun with this than I did.
“Real” Escape Rooms: A long ranty rant
I’ve been seeing lots of talk about the Red Bull Mindgamers tournament that happened recently. It’s sparked some interesting discussion but there’s one point in particular that seems to keep coming up that almost warrants its own post.
That point is the competition design did not really feel like an escape room. Either the puzzles were too cerebral or it did not feel immersive enough (To the viewers. According to the players, there was much more story there to follow) or there were too many task based puzzles or a myriad of other complaints. Read the rest of this entry
Story Game Corner- Oxenfree
Oxenfree is the game of my childhood. No, neither of my parents died nor divorced. I was not a rebellious teen who went to beach parties for some underage drinking shenanigans. I did not even dye my hair blue though not for lack of wanting.
But Oxenfree is about friendship and it’s the sort of adventure my friends and I craved growing up. We consumed every episode of X-files the moment they aired and quoted them much to the annoyance of our peers. We loved the idea of secluded islands with rich and tragic histories, big, mysterious houses holding dark secrets from the past, caves full of whispers and supernatural phenomena and a group of quirky friends who must discover the key to solving the mystery. Read the rest of this entry
Story Game Round-up: Sarah Is Missing
I am in the midst of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) so naturally I am seeking any method of procrastination I can think of. I have denied myself my beloved Stardew Manor (more on THAT another time) but quick games that I can play for one hour at a time are still fair game.
Enter Sarah Is Missing, developed by Monsoon Lab and recommended to me by my friend Dan the Video Ninja, who has suddenly become my supplier for new and innovative story-driven games.
And yes, this is counting toward my word count. I’M BEING CREATIVE SO IT COUNTS!
Sara Is Missing (or SIM for short, an awesome play on words) is available on PC, Mac and Android. Because of the nature of the game which I will obviously get to I ended up downloading it for Android. If you decide to download the game for yourself and happen to own an Android, I would recommend getting this version. Even without having played the other versions, I know for sure this is the best one. Read the rest of this entry
Thoughts from the Test Chamber 