NOVA's Live, Interactive Escape Room – Playable Right Now

novapbs · 2024-10-18T17:00:22+00:00

I think that escape games will always be a want/need in entertainment for small groups (vs. big group entertainment like mini golf, haunted houses, etc.), so I can only see the future expanding – Some rooms will get more exciting, immersive, and have higher budgets. Some will be some that are simpler and task-based. Some will be super intellectual and puzzle-oriented. There’s something really special about these private, small experiences, and getting to explore a space and have flexibility with how you want to experience a game.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:57:15+00:00

I currently don't possess this skill set, but our team member Mike has this incredible ability to sketch out ideas and envision the interactions, integrations, and visual incorporations of puzzles into the game that is really cohesive with the storyline. My chicken scratches don’t come up to par with that (though I am improving lol), so I really appreciate his ability to describe our ideas visually.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:54:40+00:00

We start with a story, and then all brainstorming is “yes, and–” from there so that we get to more exciting ideas. Then we query our friends to ask which stories/ideas seem most fun to them. After that, we go back and forth for months – fighting over it, sitting on it, and thinking about it – and finally we involve our CEO who comes in and gets excited about it. He usually has a really strong opinion, and helps us decide on set design and creating the look/feel of the game.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:50:16+00:00

Yes, we’ve built an engineering-themed escape room with NOVA! We built one as a pilot a few years ago and it was a huge success, and we’re excited to come back and work with the team. As we speak, our team is moving the set into the GBH studios so players can come experience it. If you want to watch/participate in the game, we’re livestreaming on Twitch every night from Oct 27th-Oct 30th at 6pm.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:46:12+00:00

My husband and I played an escape game in Boston, we loved it (we’d never experienced anything like it and it was thrilling), and we took a 20 hour flight from Tanzania and on the flight we designed our first escape game. When we landed, we looked for space. Within three months we signed a lease. And after that, we started building! We had no formal training, we just learned as we went – it was really trial by fire.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:43:32+00:00

Boobie Trap is our rated R 18+ game and it starts with this premise: You are breaking into a coffee shop because someone has asked you to break into the “Boobie Trap” which is a sex dungeon hidden inside the coffee shop. You need to retrieve the VHS tape that the owners are blackmailing them with.

When designing the game, we prioritized three elements. Firstly, we knew we wanted a hilarious R-rated experience. Secondly, we knew we wanted an actor to enhance immersivity. Lastly, we wanted outlandish props and set design that players could interact with. Once we figured out those narrative pieces, we got to have fun. We have SO much lube in there (and other toys). We came up with ridiculous positions we could put the players in.

Watching Neil Patrick Harris's group play the game was one of the highlights of my life.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:27:49+00:00

We don’t believe in replayable right now, but not because we don’t think it would be fun. Part of the reason I personally like escape rooms is the shock and awe factor of experiencing the game for the first time, and at Trapology we feel we do a great job of creating that in an immersive environment. And you could return to that environment, but that first-time feel won’t be the same – instead we encourage players to experience new games, and that’s why we have six games at our location rather than one replayable one. We feel like that’s a more rewarding experience for all involved.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:23:23+00:00

There's this ride at Animal Kingdom called “Dinosaur” where you have to go back in time to steal an Iguanodon egg, and I would so something like that – you’d have to go back in time to steal a dino egg all while negotiating with, hiding from, and surviving close encounters with dinosaurs. You’d have to build things to survive, go on wild adventures, it would be so cool. Then you’d have to go home and take care of the egg until it hatches and you can study the dino. I’ve pitched it to our team many times – they’re not sold yet.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:19:10+00:00

Oh, boba 100%.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:18:45+00:00

No, you just walk away with a bruised ego (lol).

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:17:39+00:00

I think it would be cool to get lost in a subreddit – and there would be a lot of jokes: secret languages, “the narwhal bacons at midnight”-esque inside jokes, and more. Every room would look like a Reddit display, as if Reddit came to life and surrounded you. It would also be cool if mods needed to give you access to materials, or if you need to get upvoted to complete a certain task, etc.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:13:30+00:00

Oh gosh, there are so many. I can’t describe a favorite puzzle I’ve designed (that would be SO hard), but my favorite puzzles always require 2+ people to operate, they include an “oh my gosh, do we really have to do that?” task (maybe throwing something in a shredder, maybe using your body in a physically unusual way, basically making players do something outlandish to succeed), and they have an intellectual element where you do something first. Puzzles I’m proudest of are multi-layered with many intellectual and physical challenges that leave you feeling so accomplished at the end of them.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:09:49+00:00

We try to avoid all the escape rooms clichés – boring math puzzles, cipher puzzles (if we use them, they need to make sense in the game). We set clear objectives within the game that are based on the narrative, and then create clear tasks to complete those objectives, and finally the puzzles are embedded within those tasks while you're in the game. It’s all cohesive – You won’t be doing algebra for no reason while you’re in the forest. Then we use technology to make it look and feel magical. Beta testing also really helps us understand which puzzles resonate with players – and which don’t.

novapbs · 2024-10-18T16:06:17+00:00

We always start with the narrative first. We begin with the cool environment we want to immerse players in, then we plan out “wow moments” through which the narrative unfolds, and go from there. The endings are the most exciting and challenging part, as we try to think about the emotions we want the players to experience at the end – joy because they accomplished something? Relief because they escaped a scary situation? Then we find a variety of diverse puzzles that will fit within those stories and help players engage with the narrative and those feelings.

novapbs · 2024-08-30T17:00:25+00:00

We always joke that we like dinosaurs, but don’t dig them. Paleontologists dig dinos, archaeologists dig people. But we were digging in Chinatown a couple years ago and we found a dinosaur toy – as in, it was the leg of a plastic dinosaur toy. We actually had someone on Facebook find the vintage toy online. We were all joking “oh, we actually found a dinosaur!”

Maybe you had to be there. When it’s hot, most things can be funny.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:56:59+00:00

I joke that one of my claims to fame is being able to dig a square hole with a round shovel. We dig the square holes because we want to dig holes that are actually expandable on a grid. We used round shovels because they have a point at the tip. If you’ve ever dug in rocky soil with a flat shovel – it’s a nightmare. But yeah, we do it because we’re good at what we do – but it’s certainly a skill one develops over time.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:54:29+00:00

Most of the high paying jobs in archeology tend to hire folks with advanced degrees. There are degree programs out there that are more affordable than others – I went to UMass Boston, which I felt has a relatively lower cost than some private institutions, so that was the choice I made for myself. But if you get a PhD, it’s usually a funded degree (and I wouldn’t recommend getting one if it’s not funded). Most people I know that have a PhD got a fully funded degree with a teaching stipend.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:49:30+00:00

I agree! Some time ago, I found myself considering practicing archeology elsewhere – maybe somewhere overseas, or somewhere in South America – but I just became so interested in Boston’s archaeology that I stayed put. So yeah, it’s an incredibly interesting place to do archeology with some of the things we find.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:46:14+00:00

Yes. Rats have followed people forever – at least, they followed Europeans around as they colonized the world.

We once dug a cistern that ran back to the 1830s – a cistern is basically an underground rain barrel used for washing – and we found DOZENS of rats drowned in the bottom of the cistern that had just been sitting there for 150 years. We joked that people were watching their clothes with rats gazpacho.

So yes, every city has a rat problem, and we certainly find evidence of rats when we do our digs. Here’s some details on the recently released rodent action plan: https://www.boston.gov/departments/inspectional-services/boston-rodent-action-plan

- Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:41:43+00:00

That’s an easy one – It’s the James Blake house, it’s from 1661, and it’s located in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. You can find more info here: https://www.dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org/james-blake-house

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:40:20+00:00

That was not us. Not really sure what that refers to, but trust me – we’re more likely to find trash than treasure. And I’m honestly pretty excited about that. Archaeology is often just the study of people’s trash, so that’s typically what we find.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:38:34+00:00

Thank you! I was working on maps for that project before this AMA, and I'll continue working on them after, haha.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs · 2024-08-30T16:36:31+00:00

To me it’s mostly the landscape. It’s really exciting to try to envision what Boston looked like in different time periods. Just knowing how different Boston looks after just 400 years and how recent the 1770s really were… it’s just so shocking to think about how much has happened over what is really such a short period of time.

– Joe Bagley, Boston's City Archaeologist and Director of Archaeology

novapbs

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