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 a skeleton's eye

• 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 an interactive terminal interface for 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.