Laboratory Escape Room - 2025
Retro Sci-Fi Escape Room: "The Laboratory"
Role: Designer, Developer, Builder
Duration: Halloween 2024
Skills: Physical Design, AI Integration, Custom Software, Hardware Prototyping
Overview
I designed and built an immersive escape room experience where players find themselves trapped in a derelict retro sci-fi laboratory. Their only companion is B.R.O.M.—a sassy AI mainframe they can converse with to gain information, request hints, and advance the narrative.
Puzzle Design
The experience combined digital and physical puzzle elements:
NFC badge reader granting access to secure laboratory systems
Biometric retina scanner requiring players to locate and scan skeleton's eye wit an embedded NFC tag
Electrical lock puzzle where players needed to locate batteries to power a set of buttons they had to press in tandem to unlock a feature of the AI computer
Siphon puzzle where players floated a key out of a sealed glass container
Hidden lab notebooks containing coded information
Environmental storytelling through scattered clues about the lab's former workers
Costume finale where players had to dress as deceased researchers and use the AI terminal's camera system to "verify their identity"
Technical Implementation
AI Character System: Built a retro sci-fi interactive terminal interface that looked like an old mainframe. Players could delve into the file system to search for clues, use the scanner for badge and biometric access, enter code, and even talk with a conversational AI B.R.O.M. that could hold conversations, respond to player questions, and dispense contextual hints.
Surveillance System: Designed a custom monitoring solution using three inexpensive RTSP cameras and a web application I built to stream feeds, allowing me to observe players and communicate in real-time.
