Designing the Caves of Caneen

Designing escape games

Between my wife and I, we now have about 10 years of combined experience making escape games. We’ve learned a lot from how we like our games to be ran, and what kinds of challenges we think add up to a good escape game. Originally this game was going to be a remaster of Clancey’s Lodge, a fan-favorite haunted cabin escape room from our previous location. I came to the conclusion that it’d be a better game if it tried to do it’s own thing rather than follow in the footsteps of another game.

What's in the game?

There is a good deal of reading. Players will need to read through notes found in the world, but are never expected to read anything tedious. Our previous location had a dictionary in the room, and while most players understood you probably don’t need to skim the whole thing it didn’t stop others from trying. In our previous room, Clancey’s Lodge, you were required to read the first page or so of any of the four books available to determine the order you needed. Clues were left in notes we had made which suggests what the book might be. Knowing some people may not have read every piece of literature out there, we stayed with classics. We ensured the notes found in the room referenced something players can read on the very first page of the book. So many players resisted turning to the first page! While this room does feature a good amount of reading, none of it is from pre-existing literature, so players can be assured that what they are reading is directly related to the escape room they are in.

There is some translating that occurs using a made-up script. This is an example of the script, feel free to read but it won’t really benefit you, unless your goal is to show up being able to read dwarvish in front of your friends. Weird flex, but cool anyway.

This is literally in the room! Read if you want. Come with your name spelled in dwarfish for something cool. I just checked our inventory and we are overstocked in hi-fives!

Translating this script to or from dwarfish is technically reading again, but we never ask you to translate more than a few glyphs at a time. Anything more than that runs the risk of tedium. 

There are some light dexterity puzzles that anyone can complete, through trial and error if necessary. These are mostly to add some spice to the room, and have players focus on something other than logic for a few moments at a time. 

There is a black box that I believe will live in infamy for some players. We’ve placed it at every point in the game, and it still can be brutal for some players. At this point, I’m adding it to the start of the game, just so that all players have a good shot at opening it. My one consolidation with the difficulty and keeping this dastard of a prop in the room is that this is technically our first optional puzzle in an escape room. The contents (as will be plain to see) are only a couple of word blocks only useful for the optional story block puzzle at the room’s epilogue. 

The room is nonlinear. There are points that require a sequence of puzzles to be solved, but many of these sequences can be done in any order. This allows for multiple puzzles to be worked on at a time. Which may lead to smaller groups getting overwhelmed with info to digest. By making it nonlinear, larger groups may be able to proceed through the game at a much quicker pace than a smaller group, yet they run the higher risk of miscommunication (detrimental if someone is dead set on a dead end idea).

Finding the balance

Creating an escape room from scratch can often feel like a give and take. Moving a single key item earlier in the game design drastically changes how the room is approached, which in turn affects the experience as a whole. It’s a delicate dance we have to perform until we feel the game is being played just right. The only way to find out what the room needs most is getting it played!

 A great example of this actually occurred during testing of this room. We had added a component to the dwarven lexicanum; letters can also mean numbers.

A single image which sends shivers most men spines...

The initial test groups understood it quite well, it was used for a single puzzle and then they moved on. In the later test groups I made the cipher available earlier in the game, which made players absolutely waste their time on irrelevant items and by the time the relevant component came into play they had completely moved on from translating numbers.

So we compensated by trying to make the cipher available later in the game, which only seemed to make the problem worse as they attempted to decipher EVERYTHING. Turns out, it was great right where it was. Unfortunately, by this point the game had changed to a point where it could no longer be placed where it was originally. With what I learned from the other tests I decided we should cut the puzzle. And thus, I removed a good deal of math problems for all the math haters out there.

Art not science

Making an escape room is an art, when we try to make it into a science the game often feels flat. Now that there was a significantly large puzzle removed, there stands a change players can escape in exceedingly fast times.

Not on my watch, I added a clock. It’s the direct clock from Clancey’s Lodge, with some fine tuning. So far this has been the only item from our first location to be used as it was before, and even then the way to solve it is different and we’ve added a few parts to the prop. So while it’s the same, it isn’t.

What we hear

It’s flattering to hear when someone has played our game before, but it’s always bewildering when players tell us we made one of their favorite games. At our previous location Cerebral and Bomb Threat were our least popular escape games by a margin. Yet, I’ve been told by players over the years of each of our escape games being their favorite. Mind you, I’m entirely critical on the games we produce; I know all the flaws that come with them.

One of our first games was Global National, and there was a puzzle where you effectively play the game telephone, but with a telephone. You dial a number, quickly repeat what you heard, and have a teammate (or is it roommate?) across the room jot what you say onto the whiteboard fixed to the wall. Not a bad puzzle, but it had 3 different steps to it, all of increasing complexity. When players think, “I should ask for help!” the puzzle went flawlessly.

The problems would always happen when one player would listen to the first step of the audio and never think to ask for help writing it down. With this being our first escape game my wife and I produced we wanted the difficulty to be turned up. Nobody was escaping in 15 minutes under my watch. So the numbers on the first step were all oddly similar, like five-five-nine-nine-five-nine-five-nine-nine-five. Kinda brutal when one person is trying to memorize it. Paired with making the next message slightly longer and give slightly different information it made it near impossible without help! Didn’t stop players from trying, and it would cost them many minutes and frustrating attempts before they’d give up. These players are often the same types that move on without telling others that there's a clue here they don’t know how to obtain. 

There’s this huge glaring issue with the game, yet one of our earliest players told me it was his favorite escape room out of dozens he’d played!

Who will favor the caves?

Will Caves of Caneen be anyone’s favorite? In a way, it’s already mine. My wife and I created a truly fantastic set, paired it with one of my favorite storytelling mechanics, and topped it with a layer of puzzles that give players a sense of progression and mastery of the room. All of these combined players can be in a truly immersive environment I’m quite proud to release.