[MUSIC] This episode is brought to you by Morty, Buzzshot, Cogs, and Patreon supporters like you. [MUSIC] Cogs by Clockwork Dog is an easy-to-use platform for running interactive events, specializing in escape rooms. They have plug and play hardware that seamlessly integrates with their software, so you can create a show with lighting and sound cues, all without having to write a single line of code. Map different kinds of inputs and outputs by building up simple logic steps which determine what you want to happen and when. Their newest product, Cogs 5, will allow Zigbee connections, powering smart bulbs, buttons, and switches, as well as MIDI keyboards. It'll give you remote connectivity over LAN or the internet, and now they're also integrating with Buzzshot or other sponsor, letting you integrate the player's info into the game or automatically updating leaderboards. The Cogs starter set is normally valued at $257, but our listeners can get the starter set today for only 130 with free shipping to the US. You can learn more and purchase your Cogs starter set at Cogs.show. Use code Repod Ed Checkout. That's RIPOD. Link and details in the show notes. Welcome to the reality escape pod, your lifeline when you need to get away from the real world. I'm David Spira alongside my cohost PG Law. Together we're exploring immersive gaming from all angles and we'll be joined by guests who really know their stuff. Today's guest is Summer Herrick. She's a writer, actor, and co-founder of the iconic Escape Room Company, L'Occurio in Seattle, Washington. L'Occurio was one of the earliest escape room companies to truly embrace storytelling through gameplay and help to establish what greatness looks like in the medium. I first learned about L'Occurio from my friend Chris Dixon, who at the time was running exitgames.co.uk, an early escape room website out of England. Way back in July of 2015, he sent me this message. LND will either of your travels be taking you across the country to Seattle at any point in the foreseeable future. You have all manner of games to choose from there, but I'd be particularly interested in your views on the new offering by L'Occurio. By way of full disclosure, I've known one of the co-founders a little for a while, but I rate the co-founders and their experience so highly that I'm really curious to know just how well that translates to an escape game. Happy travels wherever they take you, Chris. LND. Wow, that is pretty cool. That's cool that we had a reputation where we had a business. Wow, thank you so much for letting me know about that. LND Yeah, so he was the first person to tell me about L'Occurio. We had you already on the map at the time, but it started a trend of shortly after that. We kept getting requests from readers, like, "Hey, when are you going to go and review the Vanishing Act?" And Lisa and I finally went out in 2016 and we actually had scheduled a layover on our honeymoon in Seattle for two nights principally so that we could go and play your game. And it was a wonderful ending to our honeymoon, so thank you for that. Wow, thank you. That's pretty amazing. And then the other piece of this is that there's always a most requested game by our audience. And from shortly after you opened the Storykeeper in 2018, Lisa and I spent about half a decade being hassled to play the Storykeeper. People love the game. It's crazy to me that it's been half a decade like that. Granted, we all know there's a little timeout. Yeah, there's two years of non-time in there, but yeah, it's just crazy. It's been so long. I mean, it's super, super flattering and humbling that people were recommending that you play Storykeeper. I know we've touched upon this before, but I have such severe fears of overhype that anytime anyone is like, "Oh my gosh, I have to complete your game. I'm dying for it. I've been waiting for it. I tell them to lower their expectations as much as possible because I'd rather someone come in not expecting anything and be pleasantly surprised than come in expecting mind-blowing things. And it can be hard to live up to that. I've certainly experienced that as a player as well." Yeah, I mean, what I'll say is for people who haven't played yet, Lucurios games, your game summer, they're beautiful and there is a humility to them. They aren't giant over-the-top games. They aren't 13th-gate or Escaparium games with giant gorgeous sets. You have relatively small and intimate games that tell tight stories and have really wonderful puzzles and you're doing Escaprooms really well. For the reputation that you have, I think it's because of the nuance of the way you do things, not for the bombast or bigness of what you're doing. That's what I was going to ask about, David, because when you look at the landscape of Escaprooms back in 2015, 2016, how is what they were doing at Lucurio different or what was it that made those games stand out back then? For me, it was the interplay between the puzzles and the story. That was the thing that we had seen only a handful of companies pull off back in those early days. And that was what made us fall in love with the game. And I think that's what made so many people fall in love with your work is that there was this very honest interconnection between the different components of what you were making. Not any one proper, not any one giant moment. It was this combination of things. And we've gotten that similar feedback from a lot of people where it's like, you know, we didn't have the giant set pieces or we didn't have the crazy tech, but we have sort of an overall solidness to the game where we pay attention to the details and we just try to make everything of a certain quality. And we definitely strive for that. As players ourselves, I think that's something that we certainly felt a lack of in the early industry was tying the puzzles more intimately to what was happening in the game. Not just I entered a room and I did a magnet maze. And I did X, Y and Z puzzles for whatever reason. Yeah, you know, and our design has certainly evolved over the years and it continues to evolve and we're trying to tie those things together even more moving forward. So the puzzles tell the story and not just sit separately of things. Let's start with the beginning here. Chris's message mentioned co-owners. What was the origin story of Lucurio? Yeah, so the origin story of Lucurio, it's very similar to a lot of escape room companies beginnings. There were three of us who were somewhat new to the puzzling community, a little different from the escape room community, but we all love puzzles and mysteries and we all came into this puzzling community. Roughly the same time my two partners were Natalie Parisi and Philip Dazzler and we had each played an escape room or two on our own with our own friends, but in the spring of 2014 we teamed up for a puzzle hunt in the Bay Area and afterward we played an escape room together. And we could not stop talking afterward about how great it was, how much fun it was, but wouldn't it be cool if there was an actual set and not just pull apart IKEA furniture? And wouldn't it be cool if it had an actual story and not this excuse for why you're in a room for 60 minutes? And so I had been living in Los Angeles at the time working in the entertainment industry, acting, writing and Natalie was in Seattle working in website design and art and Philip was in DC working on his doctorate in computer science. And Natalie and I were both in a place where we were looking for a new direction in life I would say. And so we continued talking and eventually I think I sent an email to the two of them saying we keep joking about this and dancing around the idea of making our own escape room. I'm down if you are, do you want to give it a shot? And we were all in, so we took several months of just having three times a week virtual meetings, learning how to business, reading books. None of us had ever run or opened a business before. We weren't necessarily entrepreneurs before this. And then we started searching for a space and things just went from there. With your powers combined, that sounds like a pretty powerful adventuring party. Yeah, yeah. We really thought we had like all the bases covered and low and behold, the biggest space we didn't have covered was, you know, business. Business now. So that was an interesting learning experience, but there's no better business school than opening and running your own business for a few years. You certainly, you learn the ways as you go. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Glilla Life. - Yep. - So one of the things about Lucurio that jumps out at me is the name. And Lucurio is one of the most interesting escape room company names that I've heard of. It's short, it's mysterious, it is pronounceable. And it walks this interesting line between unique and still memorable. And it's also a very bold choice not to put escape room in the title. Where did it come from? - That was something we decided really early on was that we didn't want to box ourselves into being an escape room company. We knew early on that we wanted to start with escape rooms but branch out into perhaps other forms of immersive entertainment. And so we didn't want to be an ex city escape room company. Plus, even back then, even with such a more narrow field than we have now, there were still just so many companies that it was so easy to get mixed up what company you were talking about because it was always using those same three or four keywords. And we knew we wanted something a little mysterious. And we wanted something that we could get a company name.com website for, which even back then was not easy. We really like Latin words. We like using Latin root words, vanishing acts, used Latin in certain parts, the classiness of that and the kind of mysterious aura that engenders. So we had basically a giant spreadsheet with hundreds of different Latin root words that we would just go in and try to mush a few together in different ways. And I eventually put low Q as in location and curio as in curiosity together. Low Curio felt like a good word. Like you said, it was pronounceable. It was short and sweet. It was kind of mysterious. And we could say that we design places for you to explore your curiosity. And so that's where that came from. Oh, oh, I love that. You guys were basically inventing like an LVISH language. (laughing) And this spreadsheet was like so long. It was so ridiculous. Like it just got so out of hand. I'm really glad that we eventually did actually find something. I love that there's more to it. And it's not just some sounds that sound cool together. That's sort of a hallmark of what we do. There's a lot of depth. There's a lot of layers to the things that we do. And because I think we all think that's kind of cool. So. Because it is. (laughing) Your first game, the Vanishing Act, which opened in 2015, was a rare early escape room that had both a performative element and a well-crafted narrative and wasn't like a pure horror story. What were your inspirations at the outset? So coming from the entertainment industry in a heavy theater background, I definitely liked the idea of theatricality. I really liked the idea of utilizing an actor. The actor isn't really inside of the room with you, but they help set the stage. They help bring you into the world before you step foot into the actual game space. When we launched that game, it ran with two staff people. Not a good business move. (laughing) Really not a good business move. But from an artistic standpoint, it was great. Because we really wanted to have a separation between the real world and the sort of magical setting of the game. So we didn't want it to be the same person having you sign a waiver, telling you how to open a lock. We didn't want that same person to be the person that said, "And now I'm a magician's assistant and welcome to the world of the game." We really wanted to draw that line so that people felt the difference. And certainly my background in theater was a big part of that. And then I think all of us in our love for just mystery and intrigue and theatrics. That was just a big part of us wanting to create an entire world, an entire story instead of just a roughly themed room, if that makes sense. - It most certainly does. As I had mentioned, I finally got to play your second game, The Storykeeper, which opened in February of 2018. And recently having played it, it still feels fresh and it feels like an extension of what you started with the Vanishing Act. What were your design goals? What were you looking to do differently or similarly between these two productions? - So we really wanted to take lessons learned from the Vanishing Act and build off of those and push forward and move into a higher level of immersion, a higher level of theatricality, more intricate set design, more tech elements, certainly. We wanted to keep the good game flow and puzzle elements that I think still hold up in the Vanishing Act and up our game as far as the other elements go. Like I said, the theatricality set design tech. We wanted to create a little more magic. We wanted to just have something that was more immersive is the primary thing that keeps coming to mind even though I feel like that word immersive just gets so overused. But we really wanted people to feel like we transported them. We really wanted people to feel like they've broken away from the real world. And I was also really interested in utilizing actors in a way that was more intense and more tied into the game even than the Vanishing Act. I wanted to play with not just having a character that sort of introduced the story for you, but character or characters that were more intrinsic in your journey. You wanted the actor to be more involved in the game than being like a game master or just a voice that you're hearing or somebody introducing the game. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think using actors in rooms is a really interesting thing that I'm still surprised not more people do at least outside of the horror genre. Obviously horror rooms are sort of where you see it most often, you know, the serial killer that comes in the room, the scary voice over the loudspeaker. And look, it's easy for me to say that coming from a theater background. I am very comfortable with writing a script and coaching people on learning lines and acting. That's not a skill set that every owner has, but it's a cool underutilized way of just creating another level of magic that isn't always present in escape rooms. You think that's sometimes the missing element of really making something feel super immersive? Yeah, I think if you really want people to feel like they're living in the world you've created, that world shouldn't be empty. And that doesn't necessarily even mean you have to have an actor. Like certainly we've seen characters that appear in other ways that character can be non-human, that character can be non-present. It can be someone that you're experiencing through notes or recordings. But I think that if you create a world with no one in it, you're automatically setting yourself up for a lower level of magic and immersion. I don't even know that a world with no one in it is a world. It's just a place. It's funny. When she said that, I literally got chills in my body. And I was like, I don't know why. Never thought of it that way before. That's true. If you want an experience to have soul, you got to populate it with souls. Yeah, I mean, unless you have a post-apocalyptic world where everyone's a zombie or something, that's, you know, still have the zombies. But even then, I feel like the magic in a well-constructed post-apocalyptic world is feeling the remains of what was there. It's like the difference between visiting a historic site where there is nothing left and visiting a historic site where there is some unique construction there. And you're like, wow, I can't believe humans made that. Versus, I know in my head that people were here at one point, but it's so abstract that they could have been anybody. Yeah, for sure. That's a great point. [MUSIC PLAYING] We're taking a moment to thank our sponsor, Morty. Morty is a free app for discovering, planning, tracking, and reviewing escape rooms, haunts, and other immersive social outings. And Morty is now available for all to use on its fantastic website experience, iPhone app, and its brand new Android app available now on the Google Play Store. I believe in Morty so much that I have a stake in it as an advisor. We asked past guests, owner of Stash House, in Los Angeles, friend of the show, and Morty advisor, Tommy Houghton, what he felt about Morty. Here's what he had to say. Morty's a shortcut, a cheat code, if you will, to turning new customers into enthusiasts. We used to just hand out flyers after a game, but now we point people to Morty. It's like, why give them a fish when you can teach them how to become fishermen? You can learn more at morty.app/repod. That's our E-P-O-D to sign up and get a special badge for our
listeners, link and details in the show notes. Your games are, in my opinion, exceptionally well designed and continue to hold up because of that. What are your thoughts on the longevity of the games that you build? So longevity is something that has and continues to surprise me. The Vanishing Act is now well over eight years old and it's still selling out quite often, which blows my mind. I do think that we have a pretty good sense for game flow and puzzle design. And I think that those two things go a long way in keeping something still working after a certain number of years. Also, look, we have a lot of care for what we do. And we're constantly cleaning the space. We're constantly replacing props. I'm constantly buying new books. It's really important to me. Seattle's kind of tucked up into a corner pocket of the country. It's not necessarily easy for people to get here. We have enthusiasts that will come play that have said, oh my gosh, I'm at the come play eight years ago. I can't believe how well the Vanishing Act still holds up. And I think a lot of that, honestly, some of it has to do with the gameplay for sure. But I think a lot of it just has to do with maintaining the space. People are surprised that things aren't more dirty. People are surprised that things aren't falling off the wall. And you know, and you can see that in a game that was a company opened three months ago. And you're like, wow, I can't believe this thing is already broken. My reaction to seeing the Vanishing Act when I played it virtually after having played it years before was it looked exactly like it did in my memory, which I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting it to be as meticulously maintained as it was. Now, I have a question, Summer. I've heard you mentioned a couple times. You think that one of the strong suits of your games are like good puzzle flow and puzzle design. What in your opinion makes for good puzzle flow? It's funny because Gameflow was something that we focused on when we were designing our first game, but some things you come into by design, some things are sort of happy accidents and you realize after the fact what a great thing we unexpectedly did. But honestly, I think that poor Gameflow is one of the biggest downfalls to any escape room I've played in the escape room that should be great for all intents and purposes on paper. But if the Gameflow is janky, it can just completely ruin the game. And as far as what makes good Gameflow, you have to be able to entertain the number of people that you say that you're entertaining. I hope I don't make anyone mad with this, but don't tell me your room is for two to 16 people because that is not true. You are wrong. You have to have either enough going on to keep that X number of people working entertained or you have to accept that you have to have a smaller amount of people in there. And I think it's really important to have moments that bring the team back together, especially if you're trying to tell a story and have any sort of the adder-cality to have a moment when all puzzling stops and we're all together again and we all experience something. This really beautiful in Gameflow in general just to give it levels, just like reading a book or watching a movie, like you want different levels in that experience. And if it's just puzzle open box, puzzle open box, puzzle open box, the whole way through, you don't have those levels and that can feel not as good to your sort of innate sense of flow. That makes a lot of sense that you build that in. I always say one of the best pieces of advice David ever gave me about being a good teammate is making sure that you gather all of your teammates together when you're about to do something that you think will trigger a really cool effect, right? But that still puts the onus on the players. And when you're so excited, you've got kids, you've got a large group, that's not always possible. So, you know, I like that as a designer. You are taking that burden off of the shoulders of the players to have to remember to gather everyone together. Yeah. And I can't tell you how many times I've done that in a room where I'm like, okay, everyone shut up. Everyone come over here. I'm about to put the thing on the mantle. And it's like, you know, the most like unexciting thing happens. And we're all like, cool. Yeah, just like does shoots out of the horn. Yeah, exactly. It's like, all right. Well, I guess back to it then. All right. All right. We did a thing. Let's be mad. You just talked about the thing in passing that I think gets really left out in the conversation about game design experience design is that you locked into some of, I think, your signature design elements in the Vanishing Act, which is my personal opinion that every great designer has locked into a number of their signature elements. Yeah. But we don't acknowledge it. But the way that you look into this stuff is by being very reflective and observant in your games and saying, Oh, wow, that actually is working. Why is that working? What is that? And I think that's something that you have done very well. Well, wait, what's their signature design element is a spoiling the game to mention it? It's sort of the things that you just asked about earlier about like what makes a low-curio game? Okay. So you are referring to like one specific thing that they do. No, I truly mean this when I say that like when I talk about 13th date, I am thinking about a few moments in key games when I think about a number of different iconic escape rooms. When I think about a low-curio game, there is no one specific moment. It is this just general feeling that is pervasive throughout the entire time that I'm in the experience. And I think that is what makes a low-curio game at least amongst the first two. I don't want to box you in for the future. Yeah, just wait for our 30-foot water feature. Just a giant skull vomiting out water. Yeah, that's the whole game. That's the set. Yeah, those are such kind words. And really, thank you so much. I often find myself, yeah, that when I leave an escape room, what we're talking about afterward are those moments, right? There's like the big thing that happened, the giant reveal, the really cool set piece. And I certainly don't want to avoid designing those things. I think we're really interested, especially as we grow and are able to not be in office spaces with night-foot high ceilings. We definitely want to do big, cool things. But I think some of my personal favorite games that I've played as a player have that feeling that you're talking about of just being like the entire package is solid and it leaves you feeling joy. And that's awesome that you feel that way about our games. And regardless of what giant water feature we put in, I hope that we can continue to have that feeling. Don't do a water feature. Everybody regrets no water features. I know. I was just thinking that when she said it, I was like, don't do water. I don't think there is a single thing that people have more buyers remorse on than water features. Except maybe sand on the floor. I have heard so many people regret sand on the floor. It's rough. It's coarse and it gets everywhere. They tend to go hand in hand too, actually. Usually they have one, they also have the other. 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Repod listeners get an extended free trial and 20% off your first three months with no setup fees or hidden charges. Visit Buzzshot.com/repod. That's our EPOD to learn more link and details in the show notes. So Summer, can we expect any new low-curio games in the future? Are you guys working on anything? No, we're done. Close an up shop. No, I'm just kidding. We had been planning a second location expansion in late 2019, early 2020. Surprise, the world took a different turn. That ended being for the best. We were in lease negotiations and I cannot imagine
had we actually signed that piece of paper that we would still be in existence today, that would have wiped us out. So in hindsight, glad that it didn't happen. That being said, we wanted to give it some time after we reopened to make sure that things were moving in the right direction and that the business was going to bounce back in a good way. And once we felt that we were solid in that way, we definitely decided to turn back on the search for that second location expansion. And basically we've just been looking like we have been looking for over a year and a half now for the right space. And that's just proven very difficult. Seattle is a very expensive town and doesn't have a lot of the types of places that we have been looking for. But that being said, I just looked at some more spaces this week. We're always moving in the right direction. So hopefully you will hear more about that soon, sooner rather than later. We certainly have been keeping up the design work. So that expansion will have between maybe four to five new experiences and the narrative is already written for all of those. And there are all in various states of done this as far as game flow and puzzle design. And it might be possible. I am so antsy at this point to get my hands dirty and start digging out our table saw and our tools. It's quite possible. You may see something smaller from us sooner than that. Looking forward to that. Yeah. T's T's T's. All right. Well, whatever you're making, I'm excited for it. I took a look at the TURPICA data and you are one of the most experienced escape room owners in the world as a player. And the most experienced owner that we've had on this show aside from enjoyment. What does expanding your experience as a player do for you as a creator? So much. Look, I have a lot of people that contact me saying, I'm thinking about opening an escape room. Can I meet up for coffee with you? And I try to always do that. I'm very encouraging as a player. I want to see more games open. But the biggest piece of advice I give any of those people is play games play more games. There's so much to be learned. There's things to be learned from good and bad games or less well designed games. Let's say I honestly firmly believe that the most you will ever learn as an escape room player who wants to be an owner is from playing absolutely terrible games and seeing all of the creative ways that negligent owners have come up with to just torture you as a player and some of those on out of the experience. We've interviewed enough escape room owners now to know that half the time the origin story starts off with I played a terrible game and it inspired me to make one that was better than that one. Yep, absolutely. Just so many lessons you can learn and I always like to say that I designed from my player point of view. So I designed the things that I want to play. I designed the things that I'm always like, oh, why haven't I seen this done. I try to think of ideas that I haven't seen in any of the I don't know where I'm at exactly 860 edge games that I played. Wow, you are in kidding, David. That is pretty experienced. You're only a little bit behind David. I wasn't being hyperbolic. I mean, look, that might also be part of the reason the little Curio has designed to escape rooms in eight years. I should probably stop traveling quite so much. But I do think it's so important because it blows my mind whenever I hear an escape room owner or creator say that they don't play escape rooms. It's like a novel is saying they don't read other people's books or a chef saying they don't eat at other people's restaurants. Like how are you supposed to know what is good or bad without putting yourself into the shoes of the person experiencing it. And it's not just, oh, this game, they're not maintaining it. So all the tech props are broken. I'll never do that. That's a very basic level. There's also just the level of being able to feel what game flow feels like. Game flow is such an important thing that so many people overlook. And there's really no better way to teach yourself what good game flow feels like then to go play games that have it because you just know as you're going through an experience. I am feeling cranky. I am feeling uninvolved. I am feeling like I don't know what to do next. Having those moments is just so important to teach you how to do things right or better or more in line in world different as players. So you know people will pick up different lessons and go in different directions, but I just aside from being inspired by great games, which is another thing is huge for me. I play a great game. I get so excited. I get so excited to get back to the drawing board and design my next thing. It's just really though learning what feels good as a player, what feels right, what transported you. I often say that my favorite moments in escape rooms are the ones that make me just spontaneously clap. Yeah. When was the last time that happened? Oh gosh. This actually wasn't an escape room. It was in a puzzle hunt that I just played where I had the aha moment, the little thing in my brain just clicked into place. And all I could do was go literally these are the noises. That's the greatest feeling. It's the greatest feeling. It's like magic in a bottle. How do you capture that? Because that moment of connection is so cool. It's such a high. It's why I love puzzling and why I love escape rooms. Aside from the impact that it might have on your budget, has experiencing so many games harmed you in any ways as a creator? Certainly, I have played a bunch now in various European countries and seeing the scope of what people are able to do over there. It can be a little disheartening as far as, you know, look, some countries, some cities, the rent is much cheaper or the staffing is much cheaper or the regulations are much lower. So I have seen some cool stuff. You go overseas and you play like a 5,000 square foot room, a single room, or you play a three and a half hour game and they're charging the same sort of prices that we charge here. And it's like, oh, I just I can't keep up with that. And it kills me. So look here, you're up 20 years. Yeah. So I had a feeling that that was going to be your answer. There is this fear among owners that if they play other things, they're going to like burn through ideas. But I think it actually inspires you. And I think the extreme end of what this can actually do that can harm you is that you can end up adding to your imposter syndrome by experiencing these incredible things. Yes. And having them highlight what you can't do either because of cost or real estate or regulation or just money or ability. There are things that you can't accomplish. But I do think that one of the things that sets you apart is that you know what you aren't doing. You're fully aware. And I think when I hear your trepidation about hyping up your games, I think it's because you know what is possible in the escape room space. And you know what your games are and aren't whereas so many people are so eager to hype up their games without having any idea of what their games are relative to other games. Yeah. And man, I mean, you are so right about it, upping the imposter syndrome because after my first European trip, I was a little horrified that Luchirio games were even being mentioned in Turpica next to some of these crazy blow out experiences. But I think you're totally right. It's important to remember that that's not the end all be all some of my favorite escape rooms as a player are smaller games or the moments that I love could have been done in a smaller game. So I think it is important, especially for us owners in the United States who are perhaps trapped by certain restrictions that other places might not have to remember that we can still create great things. We can still focus on the things that we can do well and to be unique. I think that's such a huge part of it that gets overlooked is uniqueness. We don't have to be in a 5,000 square foot space to have something that no one's ever seen before. We don't have to have a two and a half hour game to create a really interesting story and transport people. So yeah, it's really important to sort of keep that all in mind. As hard as it can be once you've done some of the things that I've done. Man, yeah. I'm with you. I just played Ghost of Mentryville, which is probably smaller than my podcast studio and has very few props. Yes. Very little detail. And it is a magnificent, unique and creative experience is possible. That's actually one of my favorite games and it's definitely one of my favorite small space games. I love that game. I hate that up so much. I think it's beautiful. So Summer, I know that you are an avid long time puzzle hunter.
You've done a lot of puzzle hunts and probably designed a few puzzle hunts also. And you did mention previously that you had that aha moment, but what are some of your favorite moments from puzzle hunts? Oh wow. Yeah, so I've been doing puzzle hunts for roughly a decade or so. I love it as a lot of people have the same story of stumbling upon the puzzling community and being like, how did I not know this existed before this time in my life? I've always, the puzzles. I've always loved games. I am so sad that I didn't discover the puzzling community much sooner. But yeah, I've played the MIT mystery hunt for many years now. And I'm on team left out and we ran the mystery hunt in January of 2020, right before the world shut down. And that was a really cool experience. And I actually had the honor of portraying the main character in our hunt in our story. Penny. Penny from Penny Park. And that was super cool because not only did I get to help design some puzzles and events and whatnot, but I actually got to go around and visit teams in their rooms and kind of experience firsthand them experiencing the hunt. And with the way we designed it, I actually had some emotional moments with the character, which I think is pretty unusual for the mystery hunt. And that was just super cool. It'll also allowed me to get back to my acting roots, but being able to be with the team, leading them to the final, like, run around and having these emotional moments of connection with people, like that was really special. And something that I have not gotten to experience a whole lot in the puzzling world, but I thought was pretty cool. It reminded me of certain things that I have gotten to experience in the escape room industry and immersive theater. So do escape rooms scratch that puzzle hunt itch for you or does a puzzle hunt still hit differently? It's definitely different. Puzzle hunts, you can have these longer, more layered puzzles that you just can't have in an escape room because you're limited on time. So there's definitely still for me an attraction and a draw toward the puzzle hunts. That being said, there are a lot more puzzle hunts that are happening online these days. And I can still have fun with those, but for me, where I started with my puzzle hunting, it's so much more to me if I can actually be present with my teammates. Even if we're all just in a room on our computers, it's that sort of sense of community and teamwork that makes it more special. So I tend to lean more toward those. I'm going to shift gears a little bit. You've talked a little bit about your past with acting. You were in an officially licensed stage production of Star Wars in 60 minutes. What was that all about? Indeed, I was. It pull. Which brag pointed this one out to me? Oh, nice. This was one of the coolest experiences of my life. So I have some friends who years back when they were at school at USC together, they created a show, a stage show, Star Wars in 30 minutes. And that was the original trilogy. And because George Lucas is a USC alum, they threw whatever channels they used were able to actually get sanctioned by Lucasfilm, which is pretty unusual. There's a lot of Star Wars stuff going on out there that is not sanctioned. But they had a great run. They actually got a performant of a Skywalker branch. They had a really cool pass with it. And then years later, around, I want to say 2012, they got a call from the people behind celebration, which is the not always annual Star Wars conference convention. And we're asked if they had any interest in creating Star Wars in 60 minutes to include the three at the time new films. And so my friend Patrick, who is in charge of it, put that all together. And of course, because they were expanding into six films, they needed more cast members. I got brought into that. And we had a short LA run and then played at celebration in Orlando in 2012. And we felt like superstars. We were treated like celebrities. And it was such a fun show. It's frenetic. Each Star Wars movie gets 10 minutes. So you're just like running on an offstage or throwing props around costume pieces. We're super simple. If you were Stormtrooper, you were wearing a white bike helmet and had a blaster. Yeah, there's a lot of you going on. I had to wear knee pads because things are crazy. But yeah, that was, that was just a really special experience. That was a really great time. Similarly, a few years back, I had never watched the show community. And I was watching it. And then one day there's an episode. And I'm like, wait, is that summer? Really? I love community. Yeah, me too. And that actually was born of the Star Wars show because a few of us in the cast have a friend who was on the writing staff of community. And so she brought the casting director to see the show when we had our LA run. And they ended up calling several of us in to audition. And yeah, lo and behold, I got cast. And that was a great experience. All my scenes were with Chevy Chase and event Nicole Brown. And they were both very lovely. I was really afraid that I would be a little starstruck by being right next to Clark Griswold for hours of the day. But luckily I wasn't too faze. And yeah, that was a pretty great experience. On the subject of Star Wars, what was your experience like visiting Star Wars galactic Star Cruiser in its closing weeks? So cool. Like I'm so bummed that it's closed. Same. Yeah. Of course, it had its flaws. Everything does. I think the biggest detriment for our group specifically was going so close to when it closed our flight was very, very full. A lot, a lot of people there. And a lot of people who were there for their end time going. And so they were trying to really optimize. And so it was a lot of, you know, an after which show up. And they would just immediately be swarmed by 40 people. And people that knew the beats of the story and knew like where to stand to get the special moment. And so there was definitely a feeling like, oh man, I wish I had done this a year before where the flight was at like 50% capacity. Of course, it's no good for Disney. But for my purposes, it would have been a bit of a different experience. That being said, so cool. And on such a scale that, I mean, it's Disney. They're spending, I don't even want to think about how many dollars. And they have how many actors and how many cast members. And they've got the Star Wars property to work with. What cooler thing can you have as your playground? So it was really cool. And I got really into it. I am very sad that it's gone. I hope people only take good lessons from it. As far as I don't want this to be like, oh, well, this was the failed experiment in a big company trying an immersive entertainment venture didn't work all done. We won't go down that path again. I really hope that's not the end of the story here. I hope that only launches things. I very much feel the same. Yeah. When you are talking about those moments of being in a group of people that had gone many times and they were mobbing the actors that reminded me very much of my experience of attending sleep no more for the first time this month. And I had the same feelings even there. And I went on like a Wednesday night thinking it's not going to be that full. And I don't think it was that full. And I don't know if it's like, I'm so spoiled because all I do are escape rooms and I don't even like public escape rooms. I don't want to be in a room with three strangers let alone 300. And so sleep no more was great. But I really was struggling with feeling like this mob mentality of just people mobbing the actor. They're breathing down their necks. And then you have people that obviously are fans. And they already know the story beats. And so they're inserting themselves into the scene in a certain way. And I don't know what the solution is around that because on the one hand, it's great that these are large scale events. I want there to be sustainability in terms of audience and player throughput, you know, but like how do you also account for that? And again, you also you want fans. I think it's great that there's repeat experiences and people go so much that they do know all of these. Where is there like a shared etiquette? This sounds like a great topic for us to explore in a Patreon bonus episode. We're going to do that. Yeah, because I would definitely like to talk about that. I think that lack of very personal one-on-one experience is one of the things that is a not a failing, but like a lesser draw for me than like an escaproom. But anyway, Summer, what is the best way for people to follow your work or connect with you? You can follow Lucurio on Instagram. That's probably the social media we post the most on. If you are interested in Lucurio potential future offerings, experiences, I recommend signing up for our newsletter. We always say those are the first people who will hear about anything. We will announce it be a newsletter before we announce anywhere else. For me personally, I am not super active in social media, mostly because I'm just busy, but I am always very open.
to chatting with people over email. So I'm willing to put my email out there, which is just
[email protected]. Hit me up. Like I said, I'm always ready to talk shop. If you're thinking about opening this gate room, I'm happy to share whatever bits of knowledge I have or warnings and encouragement, certainly. Email me and I love talking. - Summer, thank you so much for joining us. I've known you a long time, and I know that for as wonderful a presence as you are, you are always very shy. And I so appreciate you coming on and an opening up with us. It means so much. - Well, thank you. I mean, it means so much to me to be invited to talk with you. And like I said before, I just so appreciate what you do, both through Repod and through MISKIP artists to support this still burgeoning industry, you know? And I think the industry wouldn't be where it is today without you and people like you. And I think that's a really beautiful thing. And I commend you for it. And I hope that it continues because yeah, we're all stronger together. - Thank you. The reality EscapePod is produced by Teresa Piazza with support by Lisa Spira. We're edited by Steve Ewing of Stand Inside Media, Music by Ryan Elder, logo by Janine Proct, and all of this is brought to you by ROOMISCAPEARTHIST.com. Your home for well researched, rational, and reasonably humorous, Escape Room, and immersive gaming content and events. - You've made it to the end of the episode. I'm guessing that you had a good time because otherwise you would have bailed. How about you go and take that good time straight over to Spotify or Apple Podcast and leave us a five star review? Help other people find what we're doing. It really helps us out and think about who you just helped out by helping them find a podcast that they're really gonna enjoy. Go do it. Do it now. Thank you. Well, folks, it is that time. You know exactly the one I'm talking about. It's the one where the desperate content creator tells you, "Please, please join our Patreon. Please, I know you hear it from everybody, but it means so much to us, the amount of time and energy and money that we put into producing shows like this to the degree that we produce them and all of the other things that we're doing, it just takes a lot. And our patrons, every single one of them matters at every single level. So if you have the money available and it's not gonna be a hardship for you, please consider backing us on Patreon. And if it is gonna be a hardship, please don't. - And backing us at the $5 level gets you access to the Rhea Discord and it also gets you our bonus after show. The show goes on for like another 40 to 50 minutes usually. A lot of times we have the guests joining us. I mean, that's longer than that cup of coffee will last you. At the $15 level, you also get access to our spoilers club. Here we take deep dives into iconic, well-known escape rooms and we're joined by the creators who come in and gives us exclusive behind the scenes, director's cut style commentary. This is some of my favorite content to produce because I love talking about escape rooms in full. - You can learn more at patreon.com/roomescapeartist. Link to details in the show notes. We'd like to thank our highest level patrons, Panic Room, Escapism, Olivier Escap, Jonathan Driscoll, Breakout Games, Derek Tam, Joshua Rosenfeld, Byron Delmonico, Keystone Escape Games, Scott Olson, Paul LaSwan, Rex Miller, and the Ministry of Pequiliarities. Thank you for your ongoing support. - So I am not someone who loves horror experiences, which is funny to some people because I like certain suspenseful movies, Stephen King is my favorite author, but I often say I like reading or watching those things. I don't necessarily like being in those things myself. And so I get very scared. People ask me like, you are an escape room designer. Can't your brain tell you that this is not real? Can't your brain comprehend that these are actors, these are game masters, they're going to talk to you afterward? And sure, this upper level of my brain, no problem. But you immediately get into the animal self and that part of me is just a ball of fear, does not understand. The first really scary escape room I played was Alexa Cista in Greece. And I literally could not move. I planted, it was like roots shot out of my feet into the floor and I became a block of ice. And I had people both pushing and pulling me, just trying to get me to move a few feet across the room. And I could not do it. I was so, so petrified. I have since come to learn because even though I don't love horror rooms, I often play and travel with people who do. So not only do we have to do them, we have to click the box for like most scary version possible. Yeah, hard with pain. Yeah, exactly. So I have since learned I've done a lot of horror games. And I do have an appreciation for them. Don't get me wrong. A lot of the ones over in Europe are so spectacularly down. They're so theatrical. They have such beautiful moments. They're so well designed. It's not just someone banging on the wall next to your head or the basic jump scare. The really well done ones are just so beautiful to time being in Spain. Great example, just an amazing game. But anyway, what I have come to learn is that my method for dealing is that I pillbug. I was not expecting that. So as soon as I cross the line into like, oh, I am no longer a functioning human being, I just crouch on the floor with my arms over my head, sort of like, if I can't see you, you can't see me. And it's surprisingly effective because guess what? These are actors. These are human beings. And if they come into the room and they see someone, just huddled in a ball, quaking. Their instinct is generally not-- this isn't 100% of the time. But generally, their instinct is not, you know, I'm going to go over here and not kick this person over and really make them miserable. Generally, they go, oh, that one's broken. Let's move on. And they shift focus to other people in the group and scaring them and scaring the people who are actually enjoying being scared. So that's happened to me very often. I put out a big thank you to those actors who are conscientious, who have left the pill bug alone. Leave the pill bug alone. That's right. That's right. Your efforts are wasted here. This one is broken. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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