Zoltan’s Zarkade

Zoltan’s Zarkade was maybe the most complicated project I have ever done. The goal was to create an immersive spooky escape room in the old boy scout’s room of the Shiloh Baptist Church for Brian Sander’s 2nd Sanctuary Experience. The space had a lot of character but not much infrastructure.

The client wanted something creepy, psychedelic and retro, and I realized it was very important to work with what the space was already providing us. We came up with a concept that centered around uncovering the mystery of a Troop of Kidscouts who mysteriously vanished in the 1970s. We also threw in some arcade games and a mysterious Zoltan Fortune telling machine…

With the general concept decided upon I then had to write the story, design all the puzzles and start building the experience…

In addition to designing many analogue puzzles, the game also needed a large number of intelligent props that all had to communicate with each other: I needed to retrofit four classic arcade games to communicate with our control software, I needed to create a fortune telling machine, secret doors and more. I decided to use MAX/MSP as the software that would control the entire experience, and for the props we decided to create a particle mesh network that would allow the devices to all communicate wirelessly with our master patch.

I created four intelligent arcade games by using infrared sensors, led displays and buttons. The particle boards would communicate scores and game-states with our control system and this would in turn trigger lighting and sound effects.

When all was said and done I had made a fairly advanced escape room! Below are some of my favorite props and puzzles.

Magic Morse Code Machine

When players spelled out the right word on the morse code machine, a spooky sound effect was triggered and a mysterious message wassuddenly revealed! This was achieved with a PDLC window film.

Fortune Telling Machine

Zoltan was made by hooking up a coin accepter to a microcontroller. When all four tokens were inserted he snapped to life, triggering Phillips hue bulbs and sound cues coming from a localized speaker.

Arcade Games

I took four retro arcade games (Foosball, Air Hockey, Slot-car Racing and Basketball Shootout) and added microcontrollers and infrared sensors to track scores. When players reached certain scores that were narratively significant, the games would trigger specific lighting and sound effects. I was most proud of the foosball table: when that score was triggered I wanted the table to spit out a key that players would use later. To achieve that effect I added a small servo motor that would release the key on command.

Silly Scout Racing

Players had to press buttons on a wall in a certain order. If they were correct a secret door opened which was controlled by an electromagnetic lock.

In addition to all these props there was a host of analogue puzzles, narrative elements and design choices that had to be made. I couldn’t have done the project without the set design by Katherine Barton or the sound design by Chris Baldys. Below are some pictures of how it all turned out.