whenever a bunch of us extra credits
folk are all in Seattle at the same time
we like to get together at a place
called puzzle break for a ridiculous
awesome team gaming experience we love
it so much that this year our party at
PAX is going to be doing a giant puzzle
break game with as many of you as can
make it and as we were talking about it
we just got really excited and decided
we had to do an episode on it so here we
go you know 9 9 9 and 0 escape we're all
fans of those which is how we got turned
on to puzzle break in the first place
because that's what it is a live in
person group escape from the room
experience these escape the room things
are starting to pop up in a lot of
places so some of you may already know
what I'm talking about you're put in a
locked room with one hour to find a key
to get yourselves out of course the key
isn't just hidden under a rug it's
secret it away behind a series of
interlocking puzzles your group has to
scramble about the room looking for
pieces to these puzzles trying to figure
out how those pizzas go together to form
a larger puzzle and then finally solve
the brain teasers that emerge from
putting all those pieces together in
order to get a code or a combination
that unlocks some other part of the room
then finally after a lot of teamwork and
a little bit of luck you desperately
fumble with the final lock as the timer
ticks down to get out of the room and
win of course there's usually somebody
in the room with you who will let you
out if you don't solve all the puzzles
in time and they'll occasionally offer
cryptic hints to nudge you in the right
direction if you're getting totally off
track so the consequences for failure
aren't quite as dire as in 999 but still
these are hard puzzles expertly built
it'll take you every minute you have to
get out of this room a majority of the
groups who take these rooms on don't
finish in time and that's what James and
I wanted to talk about not about the
design of the puzzles themselves but
about what makes the difference between
winning and losing the human endeavor
that falls out of how these puzzles are
built because something very interesting
happens when you take zero escape and
make it multiplayer when instead of NPCs
you have real human beings people you
know filling all those roles all of a
sudden the game moves from being one of
raw logic to becoming a collaborative
problem-solving puzzle while part of the
game is about the pure reasoning of
figuring out the puzzles themselves
it's your team's ability to coordinate
cooperate and communicate that'll make
the difference between winning and
losing in these events teamwork is so
crucial for these rooms that
hey I'd rather go in with a coordinated
team of average puzzle solvers than an
uncoordinated group of puzzle solving
masters and B this is seriously the best
team-building exercise ever so let's
talk about mechanics and how the
mechanics of the game roll out into the
human dynamics there are basically three
parts to the puzzle break experience
finding the clues assembling the clues
and using those clues to solve the
puzzles the first great thing that rolls
out is that by breaking the challenge
down into these three categories you
make the game accessible to all sorts of
different players while a raw puzzle
game may not appeal to those individuals
who don't like working their way through
brain teasers by having a component
where players have to search the
environment and interact with the room
you create a role for Explorer type
players who can now take on the tasks of
ferreting out hidden locations and
digging out the most obscure clues and
they can feel like a hero when they
finally uncover that last piece the
puzzle solving team needed to make one
of the puzzles all come together at the
same time you also need people to
coordinate to know what everybody is
currently working on and to make sure
that the right clues are all going to
the right puzzle solving teams to make
sure people aren't accidentally working
on puzzles somebody else already solved
to always keep information flowing back
and forth between all the groups the
importance of this role allows another
totally disparate set of players to
enjoy the game then finally you have the
puzzle solvers but even here in puzzle
break at least the puzzle designers have
gone out of their way to provide a
number of different types of puzzles
from word puzzles to logic puzzles to
math problems to spatial challenges
which require lateral leaps and
perspective shifts this not only allows
everyone to highlight their talents but
actually rewards coming in with a
diverse group of skills but what I find
most fascinating and doing this is
observing your own team because it's
hectic and because you're all on the
clock you'll learn a ton about how your
team works you learn where communication
breaks down what style of communication
works with different members of the team
whether the people on your team have a
realistic view of what they're good at
do you have somebody who thinks they're
really good at coordinating but actually
isn't it'll certainly come out here you
see which people work better in groups
and which people work better alone
you learn about everyone's different
mindsets who's strong and logic who can
make wild lateral leaps if you go into
one of these escape the room experiences
with people you work with or even just a
group of friends that spend a lot of
time together
everything you learn inside one of these
rooms translates to how you interact
outside and that's the incredible thing
about this kind of experience it's this
beautiful window into how your team
works together and from a design
perspective what makes it so remarkable
is that rather than getting hung up on
what most people would probably consider
the mainstay of the genre pure puzzle
solving by breaking the challenge down
into three component parts they made it
accessible to everyone
created a much broader scope of play and
set up interpersonal interactions that
moved the game from being simply about a
bunch of people solving puzzles together
in a room to a true team effort to
overcome one monumental interwoven task
if there's an escape the room experience
to be found near you I highly recommend
giving it a try and if you're in the
Seattle area specifically we're friends
a puzzle break like I said earlier we're
gonna do a puzzle break event for our
extra credits packs party next week so
if you happen to be at PAX I hope you'll
join us see you next time