The Curse - Escape Room
Tomb (Interactive Activity Room) Projects
This is a collection of Tomb projects from my time at the CMU ETC. These projects included DMX lighting, RFID tags, interactive game elements, a touch screen kiosk, and touch sensors.
Team
Angie Mendenhall
Louise Cutter
Technology
> Touch Sensors
> DMX Lighting
> Unity Project Game and Show Control
"The Curse in the ETC" Project
This project is an escape room style attraction built inside "The Tomb" at the CMU ETC. Guests were invited inside the mysterious Tomb inside the ETC, and their host/guide would be striken with a curse. Guests had to solve a series of puzzles to defeat the curse and escape the Tomb. This experience was featured during the CMU ETC Fall Festival.
Experience
This interactive attraction features guests being brought into the Tomb with a host, solving three puzzles using the touch points on the walls of the Tomb. The lighting changes as the puzzles are solved and the entire experience has a time limit, shown by the host who is pretending to die from the curse.
Playtesting
To make sure our puzzles were understandable, we read out of the puzzle to testers from a sheet of paper to see if they could answer them correctly. Once we refined the puzzle, we integrated them into the actual Tomb environment. We continued to test the puzzles and adjust the langauge of the riddle so guests could successfully complete the escape room within the time limit.
Triggers
Each puzzle was a unique game state, and as the players completed a puzzle, they would move to the next game state. This was done with a series of checks when sensors on the walls were triggered, confirming if the players got it right, and then moving to the next gamestate if so. Sometimes, the walls were finnicky, so the host could help guide players if they needed help, such as asking them to try the correct answer again if the trigger failed to send.