Once again, some of us have somehow found ourselves following hastily-written directions to assemble furniture for grad school. Seriously, how did this become a thing? Was it only a year ago that I myself (that’s me in the blue sweater, in case you were wondering) was blissfully deciding what conversations a polygonal fox should be having with a bear on a neat and tidy little Chromebook? My, how times have changed.
We’re now deep in the construction phase for our experience. Those poles? They’re holding up a tent. In that tent, guests of the experience will be wearing hazmat suits in order to avoid the radiation of the carbon dating process. That’s, of course, after they’ve realized they need to retrieve the crate access codes from the robot, who will only open it when—well, you get the idea.
That room with the blue carpet is actually our on-site development room, where we are building and refining the experience before it’s time to pack it up and take it to Cleveland, where we’ll be running the experience at the CMNH on Saturday, April 27 all day. There, teams of 4 will have 45 minutes to experience the world and puzzles we’ve created.
Speaking of, our puzzle designer, Alan, was out this week at the annual Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, so the rest of us hunkered down and did what we could to keep things moving. We met with some faculty members who were not completely sold or clear on some of what we we’re trying to do. Talking through their areas of concern was helpful because it allowed us to see where we’ve been weak on messaging/communication.
Next week, with Alan back from the Bay Area, we’ll be getting back to refining puzzles, setting up the robot for real, building more props, and more testing. The work continues!
Oh, and here’s the completed tent:
