Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
thebureauorlando.com
Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#2Hey, Hacker News! I launched an escape room venue in Orlando about four weeks before everything went into COVID-19 lockdown. My team and I started noticing remote/virtual escape room offerings that were just Zoom calls where players direct a game master to look at/interact with things in a physical space.
We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over the environment. Paranormal Panic is our first stab at a remotely playable escape room.
Players have 30 minutes to catch a ghost, and must work together as two squads. Each team connects with a separate device (laptop, desktop, or tablet), and although they have live video feeds from the same room, they see different angles inside it. They also have control over different equipment, and have different information on their control panels.
It's built using Vue, Websockets, Jitsi, Raspberry Pi HQ cameras, and Python.
We got lucky that escape rooms are a reasonably safe entertainment option (gatherings of eight or less, no strangers, sanitized, etc.) during these times, so we're fortunate to have reopened and are seeing good attendance. That said, we hope these remote experiences (esp. as team building events) will be a good supplement to our in-person business. We're developing a few other remote experiences that are more ambitious, and we expect to have them ready soon.
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#3Hey, Hacker News! I launched an escape room venue in Orlando about four weeks before everything went into COVID-19 lockdown. My team and I started noticing remote/virtual escape room offerings that were just Zoom calls where players direct a game master to look at/interact with things in a physical space. We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over th…
Really cool idea. I've often thought about creating games with physical objects controlled remotely (my idea was something like RC cars). I'll give this a shot.
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#4I like the idea so much!! Last weekend was the first time for me in an escape room and I simply loved it, would like to see how entertaining it is online. Only one doubt: isn't 30 min too little time to play it? And isn't 49$ too much for such a short time?
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#5I like the idea so much!! Last weekend was the first time for me in an escape room and I simply loved it, would like to see how entertaining it is online. Only one doubt: isn't 30 min too little time to play it? And isn't 49$ too much for such a short time?
Thanks! :)
We've seen quite a few escape rooms charge per person or per connection for online zoom experiences. One of the largest escape room operations out there (https://theescapegame.com/remote-adventures/) charges $30 per person for their hour-long experience, and requires a minimum of four players. So that's $120 for an hour vs a $50 flat rate for 1/2 an hour. We think we're offering a good value and more interactivity.
The other reason for 30 min vs an hour is the cadence of the experience. We thought it's possible that a 60 minute experience could feel drawn out, so we opted to experiment with a well paced 30 min for our first offering.
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#6Hey, Hacker News! I launched an escape room venue in Orlando about four weeks before everything went into COVID-19 lockdown. My team and I started noticing remote/virtual escape room offerings that were just Zoom calls where players direct a game master to look at/interact with things in a physical space. We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over th…
Really cool idea. I've often thought about creating games with physical objects controlled remotely (my idea was something like RC cars). I'll give this a shot.
Let me know if you dabble with the RC cars!
We were thinking of using an RC car for part of this experience, but figured we'd leave that R&D project for another day.
Our main concern was designing/modifying the car (and its play space) in such a way where it doesn't get stuck. One of our goals was to make this an experience that can be managed and reset remotely by our team, so we wanted to avoid manual intervention as much as possible.
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really cool idea. I've often thought about creating games with physical objects controlled remotely (my idea was something like RC cars). I'll give this a shot.
Let me know if you dabble with the RC cars! We were thinking of using an RC car for part of this experience, but figured we'd leave that R&D project for another day. Our main concern was designing/modifying the car (and its play space) in such a way where it doesn't get stuck. One of our goals was to make this an experience that can be managed and reset remotely by our team, so we wanted to avoid manual intervention…
I was thinking about using making a scale model of a cityscape and letting people race cars with cameras mounted to them. Getting stuck would be a feature (just like a real car race, if you get stuck somewhere you'll lose), and require human intervention to fix. I think latency is the real problem, games work around this in many ways that aren't possible in the real world.
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me know if you dabble with the RC cars! We were thinking of using an RC car for part of this experience, but figured we'd leave that R&D project for another day. Our main concern was designing/modifying the car (and its play space) in such a way where it doesn't get stuck. One of our goals was to make this an experience that can be managed and reset remotely by our team, so we wanted to avoid manual intervention…
I was thinking about using making a scale model of a cityscape and letting people race cars with cameras mounted to them. Getting stuck would be a feature (just like a real car race, if you get stuck somewhere you'll lose), and require human intervention to fix. I think latency is the real problem, games work around this in many ways that aren't possible in the real world.
From my tinkering, I've found that MJPEG streams are the lowest latency live video I can get. Old school, but no buffering like HLS or MPEG-DASH, etc. I haven't tried modifying the buffering in HLS and the like to zilch (or at least as low as I can go), but that's one thing worth exploring. I keep it low res (640 x 360) and low fps, but use the new high quality Raspberry Pi cameras to get an image that looks decent regardless.
One way to get around the latency issue with RC cars is to pre-plot the path and build a puzzle around that. (Not that there has to be a puzzle in there.)
Also, if you like scale models, have we got somethin' cookin' for you!
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really cool idea. I've often thought about creating games with physical objects controlled remotely (my idea was something like RC cars). I'll give this a shot.
Let me know if you dabble with the RC cars! We were thinking of using an RC car for part of this experience, but figured we'd leave that R&D project for another day. Our main concern was designing/modifying the car (and its play space) in such a way where it doesn't get stuck. One of our goals was to make this an experience that can be managed and reset remotely by our team, so we wanted to avoid manual intervention…
I’ve always wanted to make a twitch plays channel with an rc car and SDR
Re: Show HN: Remotely Controlled Escape Room
#10Great idea! Are the rooms reset after each round to make way for the next group, or is it built in such a way that they can continue from the previous attendees setup?
Also I think as a potential player, it would be great to see an example video of it in action within the browser. Unfortunately the idea is something that could often be done poorly with a lack of actions/control, so I would prefer to see exactly what I'm paying for in terms of the setup.