Escape Room Presentations + Resulting Projects

On the 18th of November, everyone in our group presented a PowerPoint on their concept for a digital escape room game. My concept revolved around a prison cell which a player must escape before they are taken away to be executed, represented mechanically by a point-and-click-adventure-style puzzle game with a 1 hour time limit. The game would have had a hand-drawn, cartoonish art-style, and would have consisted of logic puzzles, lock-and-key puzzles and skill challenges, all with the intent of finding the cell key. Given the premises of escape methods left by predecessors, the player could even receive a better ending for resetting all of the contraptions back to their starting positions, so that the cell is prepared for its next inhabitant to make a daring escape. if you don't, then the game comments on how, true to the nature of a fool, you were unable co cover your tracks, and all of the methods you used to escape were sealed off, earning you a rather unsavory reputation amongst other thieves.

However, my game was not chosen to be worked on, only receiving one vote, and the 2 chosen ideas became aa follows: a cave exploration/escape horror game, inspired by the movie "descent", and possibly featuring NPCs, an uncanny valley style monster, or potentially both; And a game taking place on a spaceship in which the player has 2 voices in their head, and must choose which path to follow, trusting that what they're doing is helping the ship, not harming it.

I chose to work on the former of these ideas as a level and narrative designer, however so far, progress has been middling, as there is very little clarity on what the story or gameplay will look like in full. Additionally, I personally feel that the concept does not adhere closely enough to the idea of an escape room, and may need some radical changes in concept to fit with the task at hand. Nevertheless, I'll work to the best of my ability to help turn their ambition into a working product that fits the specifications set out by our business partner.