Crime and Villainy in Pioneer City is an escape room which was created out of the course, Designing Escape Rooms, which was a collaboration between game design professor Ira Fay and theater design professor Peter Kallok. I worked as one of the puzzle designers on a team of 34 over the course of about 12 weeks. As the name suggests, this escape room is themed around super heroes and super villains. You are working for a hero turned villain who had something stolen from them by the super heroes. Your goal is to break into the super hero headquarters and retrieve the stolen item before the super heroes get back from battling the super villain. The escape room is actually a series of three different rooms, all themed around different areas of the headquarters and each member of the hero team. The first room is the trophy room, where all of the heroes trophies and battle souvenirs are kept. The second room is a common area, where the heroes go to relax and hang out. The third room is the control room, where the security system can be controlled.

This puzzle uses perspective to reveal the answer to players. There's a pole with an eye at the top that visually suggests players to look through the hole of the eye. Right across from the eye on the wall is a map of the Pioneer Valley area (with additional roads added for more visual noise) that has the letters of the alphabet all over it. On the floor are marked locations for something. There is also a glass dry erase board in the room that's on wheels. The dry erase board has odd shapes drawn on it . When rolled on top of one of the marks on the floor, the shapes on the dry erase board will line up with the map from the perspective of the eye. The shapes that line up will each surround a letter. The letters are an anagram that can be rearranged into the solution to the puzzle.

For those who do not know, a tangram is a puzzle where each piece is a simple shape, and when combined, all pieces make a larger simple shape. When players enter the room, there are only two pieces found on a table with a circle shaped slot. The rest of the pieces are hidden around the room. Each piece has letters on it, seemingly randomly placed. When the pieces are all placed together, the letters still appear not to make any sense. The players would eventually find a piece of ripped cloth in the trash bin (where they previously found another piece to the tangram). The piece of cloth has holes cut in it that are just big enough for one letter from the tangram pieces to show through each. When placed in the correct orientation, the letters that show through the cloth spell out "WHAT SHOOTS BUT NEVER KILLS". The answer to this puzzle is "camera".

There is a projector set up in the room with "Press Any Key To Unlock" on it. There is also a table with a keyboard and mouse. Upon unlocking the computer, a desktop appears with two files representing surveillance images and a lock program. This puzzle is contained within the surveillance image file. In that file is a series of images of the room that the players are currently in, but with some additional things in the room. The first image shows the projector that you are currently looking at with a Windows startup screen for Windows NT. The second is the table you are typing on, but with a bottle of CO₂ on the table. The final image is of a stack of three books with each book having one letter that stands out from the rest (those being L, R, and O). These letters can be reorganized into the word "control", which is the answer to this puzzle.

The meta puzzle of the room is located in the lock program file on the computer where the surveillance puzzle is. Within that file is a set of three text boxes. Each puzzle gave players one word that is supposed to be used for this puzzle. Once the players enter all three passwords correctly, a safe opens with the deactivation of a magnetic lock. Inside the safe, players will find a mysterious glowing cube, which is the ultimate goal of the escape room. I personally designed and built the glowing cube which you can see below.