Entre Laboratorios y Letras: El Universo del Lab Lit

[Music] Welcome to Podcast This Escape. The Podcast, when we talk about the escape room we escaped from in the previous episode of this podcast. Ali, thank you so much, that was great fun! I feel like it's great to see that. Thanks for playing it. Ah, that was wonderful fun. I enjoyed it. The level of NPC interaction was the right amount to not terrifying me, so I appreciate it. Yes, yeah. It's a good version of like escape room NPC stuff, where they're almost like character-based signposts of information. They're to say the right thing. Oh great, I've heard this thing, I've got this from them. I know the clue they were meant to give me. So I could cut this off now or I could keep talking for fun. The clue I thought was woven into your descriptions very well, both from the characters chatting to each other, and in some of the other bits and pieces, like when we're looking at the mosaic and stuff like that. I just thought that it felt very written with care. Thank you. That was an attempt to make a visual sort of spot the difference puzzle work in an audio-medium. I think it came out alright. Amazing. Alright, so- Oh yeah, I mean this was like matching the stuff on the mosaic to the stuff in the room. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a really great version. I think describing that as a spot the different sort of thing. It's like find where these things exist in the room. It's really really well implemented. You were very good, Bill. It's spotting things in the room felt like they had some similarity. Like you were looking for bands and- I did not think about this. I didn't think about this. Pillars being hands though. That was the one that I felt pretty proud of. Yeah, you should have felt good at it. Because I drew them all out and I just had five of them staring at me and I was thinking- One of their terms sets of five things. Where the longest thing is in the middle. Those are fingers. I felt that I was pretty happy about that. That was really good. And it was good as well, that puzzle that it was one level past just saying, "The trees will be the elf thing." Or the bands on the columns, that'll be the human thing. Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but can you tell me exactly what it was?" Yeah, we had to be specific. And actually have goals in mind, which is wonderful. What I want to ask you about Alec. So you designed this room a long, long time ago. As is the way when we get guest GMS on the show. First of all, I want to know more about these characters and the creation of them. So I think my original idea was two ideas. So one was an RPG sort of actual RPG game rather than escape room based on the Tomb of Horrors, like the really classic. Oh, okay. Sure. Haven't done it. Do you know about it? Yes. It's basically so easy to die in that that my idea was kind of like Tomb of Horrors, but a time loop or something. I thought that was sort of where it was going. I thought we were going to keep dying a million times. I feel like Tomb of Horrors is very much you have to do a spot hidden check on every door that you ever walk through. Yes. No, you're right. When we fell in the pit of spikes and then started glowing, I assumed we'd appear at the start of the cave again. And this is like an amulet that lets us quick save our game. And so I was like, okay, cool. We've gone back. And now we avoid the pit, but we find the next thing. I did feel the correct amount of kicked in the pits when we fell down the second hole. That was good. I did. I don't think we did not keep checking the holes. We joked about the pool being at a moment. But we just did not take any extra care. Oh, it's fine though. And then the other idea was one for a zombie break room in a dungeon where like all the monsters go just to chill. And that was sort of the two puzzles got meshed together. Nice. So we've just said the word break room. And now I'm picturing. We can move on from audio escape rooms after this is a look. This is the start of our 10th year. I've managed it in my head. Season 19 and 20 are what's happening in our 10th year. Yeah, yeah. It's like how some football seasons go over the break. So they become the 19 slash 20 season. Yeah. But this is like by the end of this will have finished 10 years. Yeah. So this is fine. This is our 10th year. So that lets us talk about it. We're going to transition from audio escape rooms into audio break rooms. Oh. Whereas just like you walk into room. There's lots of stuff there. You have a hammer. I hit the TV. It's smashers. Nice. You can do that for an April 4th episode one year. I hit the last table. You don't do April 4s. But that sounds like a fun April 4th episode. Oh, it's smashers. We just, what we do is we get one piece of like folly that we can play on a soundboard. See, and I was like, oh, there's a drum kit in the corner. You kick it. And it goes. There you go. Amazing. But so the actual characters that you came up with, how arbitrary were their personalities, their descriptions that we got of them on how much was characters that you crafted and felt attached to. I think I felt attached to all of them by the end. Like at the start, it was very much just like I need different undead archetypes to be here. And I need some of them to be doing different things based on what I need them to be doing for the logic puzzles. And then they all just kind of grew from there. What mushroom Morgan? Why was he mushroom me mushroom Morgan gave me like pirates of the Caribbean two vibes or a baby joins us crew last of us vibes. Oh, last of us vibes, I suppose. I think there's some mushrooms on these in a darkest dungeon. I think there's some mushroom. Yeah, everyone loves that fungus whose name I can't remember. What is that? This is also just like when you put it on the in a cave mushrooms will grow on it. And you're like, wow, that's a body. It's been grown over by mushrooms. And then it gets up and says, I'm a zombie who's been grown over by mushrooms. Gotcha idiot. That's fair. I was also thinking was it was it at all intentional that the first one that we met was Lydia who I believe is also the name of a litch in the adventure zone. Oh, it is not an adventure zone reference. Most of the names are actually from Shakespeare because I wanted old fashioned sounding names. And then I found out that like Lydia's mentioned in Shakespeare. And I was like, uh, that's a modern sounding game that's actually very old. So I'll throw that one in that is very fat. I do like the name. Yes. Now I'm looking at them all and going, oh my god. I can't. What do any of these are from? They're in very minor characters deliberately so because I didn't want it to be distracting Lydia does feel like I should know Lydia is that like Porsche's assistant. Maybe I can't remember. Yeah, I think you needed an L when I think might not be I think I got a unit just as an old lady name. Elwin is the name of a Welsh monk that I'm aware of. Fair, fair. Nice. Look, it was it was a huge amount of fun. It was really it was really it probably there was a lot that was always something happening. Definitely. I liked the moment of finally talking to the race. Not the right the the will of the whisp siren thing. And basically the sirens dialogue is, hey, you're in room two. Oh, okay, great. Let me get over to room one. Yeah. You need a you need a different tool to come back here without other tool. And then this will be the end. All right. Cool. Thanks. Thank you. But I'd like me to search it all, get an idea and then come back to the other room with a purpose. I agree. It was very unusual. I feel for our slash my exploration style that we discovered that hole in the wall. I was more touchy than usual in this room. Yeah, we discovered the actual hole by by just poking around. I poked it that I poked it the columns. I was just touching stuff. I was just touching it. You stole that roof. You stole that roof. And then big, you just said, Oh, I've solved the puzzle. Now I know the hole is in the tiles. Let me go. We were waiting some of the check when you dispel the illusion. You can see you can see the whole. So that's. Yeah. So that's a lot of it. Yeah. But I did. You know, the whole there. Yeah. Yeah. You worried at all that. Oh, no, I'm showing the whole that gonna break it. I suppose it doesn't really until the until we do the. Yeah. So the only thing that worried me was when you were like, Oh, do we want to just try today's date in the thing? Yeah. Yeah. That was a very fair point where I said, look, it could be, but I do feel like that would be just that point of arbitrary. Yeah. It hasn't been told to us in a way that would make me feel comfortable trying out. Why would you randomly every day set your lock to the current day, especially on a day where you're not here? Yeah. The only logic that we had at that moment was nonsense. And so I'm glad we didn't try it. I think often we don't. We don't do tried solutions that are maybe solutions. Not unless we. I think we will do that if it's a game master that we're not 100% familiar with their style. We might try it. Oh, you found a number. Why didn't you try it? Yeah. But again, this is the third one that we've done with you, Alec. And we know that we have felt like your rooms have made immediate sense to us. So it is part of that is the trustworthiness, which helps. Do you think brainstorming for everybody? Were there any other ways that we could have died, not died? Ooh, we've been foolish enough. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think my thinking for if that would happen would be you'd probably get chewed up a bit and then spat like out and it'd be why you. We don't why you're doing that. Because suppose there's not really any danger when the ambulance let's us keep going back to life. I am very curious if I had this in real life exactly how much I would abuse it. Yeah, and to be fair, you didn't come back to life. You did still have the big holes in you. That's why everyone assumed you were a worker there. I know you're just a zombie. You're here to work. That is too much. That makes sense. That's so great. We sort of already talked about it as a list. Yes, yes, Lich Dad Zombie daughter. I don't know how many of them have been pre-break versus post-break. I can say words. How have play tests gone and has anything made a change? Or been different about how we did it compared to other people? The final puzzle where you have to spot the broom that's the door pattern, that was part of a play test because basically the feedback was, well, once you've worked out the pattern, what's the point of doing the whole thing when you've worked out the pattern? Yeah, you end with a process puzzle that's not satisfying necessarily. You want to end with a bit of an RR. I think that's a very fair point. I feel like I could have maybe made it a bit more complicated just to have that final aha moment, but I hope it was satisfying. I do the way it was. It would have taken where I own my own so much longer to recognize because we opened that image and it was my turn to describe it and I froze. I just went, I don't know, these have so much less detail than I was expecting. They're just four lines. I think the people are getting it too quickly. Like is in without any thought, which apparently wouldn't be the case because for me, I thought that would probably what it was. I think I expected that even before I opened it because in my head, I was thinking, oh, I should have made note of which way we'd gone. Oh, wow. I feel like we're the more reasonable. I wonder if I should have written it down. So I expected it in my head because I was admonishing myself for not having done it. But it was a wonder of weirdly, a thicker line would be less obviously the journey that you just did. I think if the line was a bit way too good. So it looks a bit more like a room. That's an interesting thing, don't you? The line is very much like this is a path and it doesn't necessarily look but thicker and it kind of, as it gets closer to itself in the odd way, I think might be, might be okay. But you just basically went on up people are getting it or not. Because you don't want it to be hard. You want to end the room with the aha moment, but you never want to end it with a, your stack moment. I'm stuck right. You want them to get it. Yeah. So I think the level of difficulty is fine. Did it take you a long time to get those tiles of runes in a correct, in a grid that made it so that there was only one answer that you wanted. Yeah. So because I suck at that. I started by laying them out in the path I wanted. And then I tried to make sure that there was always a room nearby that was the right color, but not the right symbol. So it's like, oh, if you've only got one of them, you could be like, oh, well, do I go this way? Do I go that way? Yes. Two ambiguous. And you, you're right that there is one symbol, one for each color. So there's like a set of green ones and a set of the other ones and so on. Oh, man. Yeah. I find coming up with things like that and making sure that they can't accidentally be broken because just I was lazy and tried to create it too quickly. I find that challenging. Yeah. No, I was so stressed trying to make it so you couldn't do it with only half of it. So if you'd like, just got the colors or just got the symbols. Yeah. That's absolutely. Yeah. So that is un like, and like unambiguously and uniquely solvable is always going to be trouble. Is it some of you, you feel like you did before you had to test it or did you, did you have a few versions that tested poorly? What did you just get it once you sat down and really worked it out? I think once I'd worked it out, it pretty much worked. Like, I don't think there was ever any issues in testing without. And what I did do was I made it shorter. Yes. Originally, there was like a few more layers up and then people were like, well, we've kind of, we've worked out what we're doing. So now it's just busy work. So it's like, you know what, you're right. I'm just going to bring it down a bit. Interesting. Did your playtesters also come up with interesting descriptors for the symbols? Yes. I did have one who said that'd be very disappointed if you didn't go for lady doing a handstand for the one that you came up with as pooping alien. Well, sorry, people. It's a pooping alien. Where's your imagination? I'm so sorry. I'm letting you all down. I don't know what to tell you. Yes. Yeah. And they are, they are, they are symbols that I have used in other things as well. So they're just like, no, they'll go to room library. So that's making them work every time. Oh, I should do something like that. No, I'm not. I'm not going to do anything. experience. I'm glad. I think it's always fun to. I tend to do quite image heavy rooms, I think, or like note heavy rooms especially, and I always enjoy hearing people read things out, because I think it's quite interesting to see. - It tends to be a lot of fun. - Which bits you focus on, which bits you don't. I did, I felt very. Part I felt smart was when we had gone through and you had questions like, "But how do we know this now?" Damn, we already know this. It was in the note. Don't you remember the note? - I remembered most of the notes. - But you didn't remember all, but how do we know in the book was signed? Danny, we know when the book was signed. Dinturally the note. That was my moment of feeling smart. - Were we correct about our assumptions about which days of the week belong, came from which racial background? - You were, yes, it was the dwarf days, the elf days, the awkward days, the halfling days. - Nice. - Yeah, it's went full stereotype, because. - Yeah. It's how you communicate to people in your inner sci-fi world. This is the basic, not sci-fi. You're in a fantasy world. This is the basic fantasy trope. If I'm going to do a subversion, I'm going to let you know I'm doing a subversion. - Fair. And our lollipop and stop sign on fire. - I'm assuming that was a frying pan. - It's a frying pan. - Oh! Makes sense. Which one of the whole thing, Alec, do you have one that you are proud of, stuff having created or just even the way that you've seen various groups handle it, which one makes you happiest? - I think the whole logic puzzle with working out people's tells and looking at the calendar. And it's always, it's always really nice to see people get fully into the calendar. You're like, "Oh, okay, so we do this, and then suddenly they're like, oh, and we know this, we know this, and we can look back and we can cross-reference like at the end where you were like, oh, and we can tell that this is definitely the dwarf day because Karen isn't working on any of those days. Like, that's quite fun. - It is. And it was a really well put together puzzle. It had like, weirdly, I think there was something good about the fact that it had more than you need a little bit. Like, these elements are like knowing all of the various, which are the elf days, which the, it wasn't relevant, but was nice addition to it that gave it like that sort of odd, very similar to you to like, this is a real system. Like, there will be information that you don't need to know because it's just true facts about this world and hidden in there. And I think had the right level of not so much that it was annoying and of like, why is all this you guys here don't need, but not exactly what you need. - What you want, if you're making a puzzle video game, that's the sort of immersive ways to be weaving your clues in that you're going to need later. - Would you not feeling too much like this is just a puzzle and nothing else? - Exactly. - It's a puzzle in space and I think it was exactly the right level of information for that, which is lovely. - I agree. - I did that as well a bit with the coloured tiles. When you looked at the wall, you were just like, oh, that's so many tiles. It was deliberately because I didn't want to give so few that you were like, oh, so we need to work something out. I think like you said, Danny, you looked at it and you're like, oh, we need to find something to cover this up. And that's sort of what I was going for is I want it to be so much that it's like, it is ridiculous for me to expect you to do something with this. - There are clearly patterns here. - Glorious here. - There are clearly patterns, but you're not going to find it. It was great. It was really lovely. I had a lot of fun with it. It was a really lovely world, a really good set of puzzles. And they worked very well and quite varied as well. Never felt like we were doing the same thing twice, which was right. - No, that's true. A good mix of like puzzle-y things to do as well as tasks to do, like make ghost coffee. God, I'm going to be so traumatised by ghost coffee for some reason. They've got the machine to like create the ghost. The coffee doesn't always have a ghost. - Coffee doesn't always have a ghost. - It's like how in Stormlight Archive everything's got a. - A little spirit in it? - Yes. - That was the spread of the coffee daddy. Then we killed it. - Yeah. - Well, thank you so much. - Poo-today out eventually. - Thank you so much for coming and running "Dumber and Forrest" - Alien pooped it out. - Thank you for coming and running it. It was really lovely to have you back. It was a really fun run. - Strong start to our train journey across the season. - Yes. As we travel all stations to 10 years, this was a good stop. So thank you. For people who wanted to check out other stuff you make, because clearly you are quite good at making stuff. Where can they find it? And do you have a good example of one of the things that you've made that you want to talk about? - So I do, I have actually made some escape rooms that I've put up on my itch page before. I've got a little sort of online twine game that you can play. My itch is "Villenia's Productions" which is V-U-L-L-I-N-I-U-S. I also make tabletop robling games. I've got two at the moment. I'm working on a third and they are both horror comedy games based around just causing chaos and having fun with your friends mostly. I've got one which is having the time of our deaths, which is about being a monster movie characters in a sitcom world. I've got Hag Race, which is about being a little girl turning into a hag and causing as much chaos as possible. And it's always so funny every time I run either of those, just seeing what the players get up to. - It's amazing. - It's wonderful. - All right, thank you so much. There'll be links to those in the show notes. Thank you, Danny, for playing with me. Thank you. It is always good. If you have someone that is at your puzzle partner, games like this, go to the itch page and do one of these little at-home puzzle adventures. They're just, they're a really good partner activity. - Hmm, that is true. - And thank you, Marie, for listening. I hope you all enjoyed this episode, this first stop on the train, the train to ten. If you want to help support the show, just tell people about it. We were already complaining before just recording about how annoying social media is to be on and use. So, save us the effort and tell your friends about this great show that you love and their train to their tenth year. - No one can say that you're an AI bot if you say it with your human mouth. - Yeah, that's the thing. No one knows when they see anything online, any more, whether it's real. So go tell them about this real thing that we're making. And it really is helpful. It's the best way to help spread the show to new listeners. So thank you for everybody who does that and for everybody who's about to do that. Now that I've asked, thank you very much. You can also help support the show with money. We don't run ads on the show. All of this support, all of our income, the fall of the show comes through crowdfunding. So thank you for everybody who supports us on Patreon. Anybody who signs up at any level can appear as an NPC in one of Danny's rooms. - Yeah, thank you, Stoley Brogar. - Stoley Brogar is not a Patreon donor, but Gabro Listo. Now that's different. But there's also a huge, a huge amount of bonus material for anybody else. The five dollar donors, there has been a new weekly bonus episode for like eight of these ten years. So there is heaps of stuff there. There is a weekly show for the ten dollar donors. There's monthly videos for the ten dollar donors. There's weekly cryptic crossword videos for the twenty dollar donors. There's a huge amount of stuff. And if you don't want to be a monthly donor, there is now a page that is linked in the show notes of collections of audio bonus episodes that you can just do a pay once, get that collection and listen to it however much you want. - Of the slightly older stuff. - Yes, so the monthly donors. - So the monthly donors. - Yeah, it's definitely better to be a monthly donor. But some of these ones that we have from years ago that are now just sitting there, listened to by all the patrons. We thought we'd make little collections and slowly add to that as time goes by. But right now you can at least get the first thirty episodes we did of a series called Two Minute Mysteries where we solve Two Minute Mysteries. It's great fun. So thank you everybody who supports us through Patreon. Or with these individual donations. Thank you again, Alex. Thank you for coming on. It was lovely. Happy to have you. Happy Danny. That's it. We're done. Bye everybody. Choo-choo. (upbeat music)