The Mystery of Captain Barnaby--BVW Round 5

Go on an expedition with a local dive tour in search of the mysterious Antikythera (ann-tee-kith-er-a) Mechanism. Join your jolly (read: cranky) tour guide as he takes you down to the sunken ship, the S.S. May. Solve puzzles with other guests and unlock captain’s logs to find out what became of the mysterious Captain Barnaby - and maybe discover treasure!

A themed entertainment escape room style experience where groups of 3-5 guests (plus their jolly tour guide) enter a rotating dive bell and are then transported to the ruins of the S.S. May at the bottom of the ocean. Guests complete a series of puzzles from physical objects in the room, and discover the story of Captain Barnaby. Upon completion, guests receive captain logs in order to find the mysterious Antikythera (ann-tee-kith-er-a) Mechanism. Puzzles include a desk that unlocks based on object placement, a chandelier that uses LED lights for guests to blow out, and a gear wall that must be placed in correct order for the final gear to spin. Experiences typically range 10-15 minutes and are suited for guests of all ages.

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This round was unique for a number of reasons; for starters, we could pick our own teams, everyone also knew about the prompt a week before the round officially started, so it was like we had an optional third week for the round since we took a week break between round 4 and round 5. Our theme for round 5 was festival.

Every year the Entertainment Technology Center puts on a festival to showcase the students and give people the chance to see what we do at the ETC. We decided to form a team of first year students interested in Themed Entertainment.

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Interim

• Concept

• Wanted escape room with physical puzzles

• Immersion was key

• What was required for immersion

• prop decoration

• lighting

• making sure nothing breaks immersion by keeping everything to a aesthetic

• Speedbumps

• Did not have a room to store all big props

• Solution: stop construction and develop what we already have and focus on the story and design, then come back to it when we do get a room

• No room with a lighting grid

• Use smaller lights that could be hung with fishing line in inconspicuous places

• Prop decoration to make sure they all fit a uniform aesthetic

• Chandelier

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• Candles

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• Desk

• Scrolls

• Puzzles

• Desk (at this point, only somewhat working)

• 3 RFID Scanners hooked up to Arduinos connected to a BooBox

• Drawer opens when all 3 tags are placed correctly

• Chandelier (at this point, working)

• Blow out LED candles for blacklight to come on and reveal secret message on wall

• Gear Wall (at this point, not working)

• Place gears on wall in correct order to connect large gears and spin them the correct ways

• Had not yet designed, created gears, or tested

Final

• Story and guest role had changed

• Got large room to continue to work on diving bell and present large props

• Diving bell plays video of going underwater

• Video taken by sticking GoPro on a stick in the river

• completed desk puzzle by fixing bugs

• Gear wall

• designed puzzle

• Originally had too many gears, but paper tested first to discover this

• Used laser cutter to cut gears

• Each gear has 4 layers of wood

• Painted

• Lighting

• Didn’t have for finals, but had for judging. Only change for judging

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If we had made it into festival, we would continue to work on everything to make it more immersive by painting the gear wall and adding for decoration for ambiance. We would also have liked to use a lighting grid to create an immersive under water space. In conclusion, this is a sample of what we would have an ideal experience to look like: