Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
thebureauorlando.com
thebureauorlando.com
We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over the environment. Paranormal Panic is our first stab at a remotely playable escape room.
Players have 30 minutes to catch a ghost, and must work together as two squads. Each team connects with a separate device (laptop, desktop, or tablet), and although they have live video feeds from the same room, they see different angles inside it. They also have control over different equipment, and have different information on their control panels.
It's built using Vue, Websockets, Jitsi, Raspberry Pi HQ cameras, and Python.
We got lucky that escape rooms are a reasonably safe entertainment option (gatherings of eight or less, no strangers, sanitized, etc.) during these times, so we're fortunate to have reopened and are seeing good attendance. That said, we hope these remote experiences (esp. as team building events) will be a good supplement to our in-person business. We're developing a few other remote experiences that are more ambitious, and we expect to have them ready soon.
Are you in the odevs slack? If not send me your email and I will get you invited.
We were thinking of using an RC car for part of this experience, but figured we'd leave that R&D project for another day.
Our main concern was designing/modifying the car (and its play space) in such a way where it doesn't get stuck. One of our goals was to make this an experience that can be managed and reset remotely by our team, so we wanted to avoid manual intervention as much as possible.
One way to get around the latency issue with RC cars is to pre-plot the path and build a puzzle around that. (Not that there has to be a puzzle in there.)
Also, if you like scale models, have we got somethin' cookin' for you!
This looks pretty fun, and definitely fit with the times! Splitting into two teams is also interesting.
Seems like a very scalable idea though :) Good luck with it! I can imagine one or two "SREs" running a warehouse with 15 or 20 rooms all going simultaneously and there to fix/reset if 100% automation cannot be done easily (e.g. a remote drone that gets stuck/falls over).
I know during lockdown our teams have been screaming out for team building activities that can be done remotely and this sort of thing would be great.
Nice one.
This is very much a v1 of our take on remotely playable games. Some quick examples: Players can control light, sound, some electronics that physically move (nothing crazy for now -- a tape deck, a centrifuge), and influence a "ghostly orb" to move around the room.
Here's a peek at what's coming down the pike: - One remote experience that's an adaptation of an existing in-person experience we have, but made in such a way that it can handle many concurrent sessions. The idea is that this'll help us with larger team building events. - Another experience with camera control, more influence on the environment, and more elaborate sets. This is definitely going to be a first of its kind.
Would love to see something like that warehouse style operation happening!
Shoot me an email if you want to arrange some team building.
If you’re interested in discovering more remotely playable escape rooms this directory has loads: https://livevideoescaperooms.com/
Also I think as a potential player, it would be great to see an example video of it in action within the browser. Unfortunately the idea is something that could often be done poorly with a lack of actions/control, so I would prefer to see exactly what I'm paying for in terms of the setup.
We've got some very short clips at the end of this video to give a taste of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQYt0L-6K-U We're probably burying it by presenting it this way.
I'll take a moment to figure out how to highlight that on the page better. Thanks for the feedback!
We've seen quite a few escape rooms charge per person or per connection for online zoom experiences. One of the largest escape room operations out there (https://theescapegame.com/remote-adventures/) charges $30 per person for their hour-long experience, and requires a minimum of four players. So that's $120 for an hour vs a $50 flat rate for 1/2 an hour. We think we're offering a good value and more interactivity.
The other reason for 30 min vs an hour is the cadence of the experience. We thought it's possible that a 60 minute experience could feel drawn out, so we opted to experiment with a well paced 30 min for our first offering.
That said, this experience was purpose built to experiment with the remote game concept. (At the time, we weren't sure how to adapt our existing in-person games.) It's a small physical space (approx. 11ft x 9ft), and we used a ton of props we already had.
Kinda how Second Life was too disconnected from reality, it immediately became a fantasy world. If telepresence is tied to a real location (for some definition of real, and likely to change over time), it may bridge the uncanny valley and succeed. Strange that it took a virus to get us there.