I started volunteering at a local theater, hoping I could get some experience as a costume designer. Everyone was very welcoming, and told me I could help out with their next "show"...
...AN INTERACTIVE HAUNTED HOUSE WITH PUZZLES!!! Guess what I did just last year for Halloween at my house? aN InTERacTIVe hAUnTeD HouSE WiTh PUzZLeS!!! Whaaaat?! What a crazy coincidence. This project was literally made for me LOL
Will I be payed? No...But, I'm so hyped that this will be my first collaborative project. I mean, just check this out:
I know these images mean nothing without context, but I was so proud of myself for how this turned out. And these aren't even all of the clues! The whole thing was set on a train, and I had 4 different "tracks" that teams rotated between, and each track included about 4-6 different clues. Blah blah blah, I'll shut up about it lol.
The theater's haunted house will be a "lost in the woods" theme. Think dark forest, witches, mysterious park rangers, etc.
All that to say: I will be taking a pause with working on my Queen Mattress costume, and may be posting project updates about the haunted house :D Wish me luck!
i don't have too too much to say about the second grand hunt digital, i solved it with niv on team huh? and i had a lot of fun even though in the back half of the hunt i basically didn't get anything and niv completely carried me :P
(that hunt is here btw)
both of us agreed that the theming of the hunt was really striking - way more so than the average hunt. each round has a certain narrative idea to it, and with basically zero exceptions, every puzzle in each round ties into that idea strongly, such that when you remember a certain puzzle it's super obvious what round it was in. this was really nice because it actually felt like we were doing different, relevant things as the hunt went on - even if the actual mechanics of the puzzles are just, y'know, puzzle hunt stuff
for a while the puzzles felt pretty maximalist to us, like in round 1 especially a lot of the puzzles had a lot more detail than the actual mechanic (which was usually some simple cipher) sort of merited. and honestly although i understand why, given the puzzle hunt meta, you would use introductory content as an avenue to introduce ciphers to beginning solvers, i feel like ciphers don't actually constitute very compelling easier puzzle content - definitely doesn't have the same oomph as, say, now i know from galactic 2023
but halfway through round 2 and all through round 3, the higher difficulty stuff was definitely a lot better for that. a lot of this stuff felt really elegant and cool and the presentation wasn't overcomitting. i especially had fun with keeping up with the keychain, and the minimeta help me, chatomg! felt actually reasonable, rather than like omega crazy hard as minimetas usually are
so overall i had a good time, even though there's not much i can point to as a "highlight" for me since i was basically failing to spot every aha! by the end. niv was like super locked in though and spotted all of the things shoutouts to them
