Solving Puzzles in the Dark

February 14, 2023 9:33 PM

The Owl Job: Lessons for designing a sightless escape room
posted by creatrixtiara (11 comments total)

This is super cool! Particularly that the information is being made available for others.
posted by Superilla at 11:28 PM on February 14, 2023

Interesting idea, but I have to wonder why sighted players are given goggles when there is a more obvious solution.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 1:14 AM on February 15, 2023

ChurchHatesTucker, is there a more obvious solution than the one discussed on the "Getting Started" page? Their argument for goggles over darkness makes sense.
posted by jellywerker at 4:41 AM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

I really miss escape rooms. Haven’t been since COVID hit. The only escape rooms I go to are VR now. One of them is Blind, by Fellow Traveler. Blind is a VR escape room game where you can’t see. The designers had to get really clever with the interface, relying not on haptic feedback but instead pseudo echo location. Any touch on a surface lights the area around it up in white outlines for a while. It was quite an experience playing through a sightless VR escape room, particularly one that occasionally got pretty scary.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:18 AM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

...unless the more obvious solution is "stab their eyes out"
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:18 AM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is fascinating.
posted by mhoye at 6:23 AM on February 15, 2023

"And this is the problem. When you're blind, you just can't assume anything. And the problem is you get a picture in your mind and if you get it wrong, you just live inside the mistake."

I'm going to be thinking about that sentence for a long time.
posted by mhoye at 6:26 AM on February 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

This is fascinating.

Fascinating is the word all right.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:46 AM on February 15, 2023

Interesting...I wonder if they got any inspiration from the San Francisco Exploratorium's Tactile Dome. I keep meaning to go, haven't gotten around to it yet.
posted by foonly at 10:22 AM on February 15, 2023

...unless the more obvious solution is "stab their eyes out"

Oedipus Rex escape room
posted by grobstein at 12:47 PM on February 15, 2023

This is so cool and interesting, thanks for sharing.
posted by Braeburn at 11:33 PM on February 15, 2023