Kyriakos Georgakakos, Marios Sotiropoulos, Varvara Garneli, Angelos Floros, Ioannis Deliyannis

Presented: DCAC — Digital Cultures and Audiovisual Challenges, Ionian University, Hybrid - Corfu/Online, May 24-25, 2024

Escape rooms combine cooperation, puzzle-solving and entertainment — but they usually put the riddles and the themed room ahead of the players themselves. This project reverses the priority: the aim is to make the interaction between players the substance of the game, using role-play, an audience, and technology.

What came out of it is The Mystery of the Pen, a gaming experience for three or four players, built on research into escape room mechanics, rules, scenery, sound, and the technologies that could extend them. It draws on detective fiction, and on Conan Doyle above all.

The story is set on Corfu in the 1950s. A wealthy count has died, the death attributed to natural causes, and the attribution does not hold. The players take the roles of experienced detectives and must solve six riddles to find out what happened.

Three decisions make it unlike a conventional escape room.

The whole adventure unfolds in front of a live audience, which pushes the players further into their roles rather than letting them stand outside them. A cast of actors guides them through it, working from a script loose enough to allow improvisation. And each character carries different tools and resources, so that what any one player contributes cannot be substituted by another.

Between the improvising actors and the asymmetry of the roles, no two runs of the game are the same. Multiple playtesting sessions confirmed that it works.