S7E1: Quirky & Compelling: The Ministry of Peculiarities

[MUSIC] This episode is brought to you by Morty Buzzshot, COGS by Clockwork Dog, Recon, and Patreon supporters like you. COGS by Clockwork Dog is an easy to use a software hardware platform for running interactive events, including escape rooms and other immersive experiences. Their plug-and-play hardware seamlessly integrates with their software, so you can create a show with lighting and sound cues without having to write a single line of code. Map all kinds of inputs to outputs by building up simple logic steps, which determine what you want to happen and when. Some of the best experiences in the world use COGS, including the Ruemann Berlin and Phanopecan London. COGS helps you create a full-on theatrical show, complete with lighting and sound cues, and all sorts of triggers. The Ruemann Berlin builds all their new escape rooms on the system, and it's allowed them to achieve their very high standards for immersion, lighting, sound, and automation by building their own custom plugins. Get the COGS starter set for only $130, plus free shipping to the USA. This bundle is usually valued at $257. You can learn more and purchase your starter set at COGS.Show. Use code "repod@checkout" that's R-E-P-O-D. 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 co-host PG Law. Together, we're exploring immersive gaming from all angles and we'll be joined by guests who really know their stuff. This season, we are shining a spotlight on Southern California in celebration of our convention Recon, which will be in Universal City, California on August 18th and 19th, 2024. Tickets are on sale now at realityescapecon.com. And today's guests are the creators behind the Ministry of Peculiarities in Azusa, California. We're joined by Adam Moody, Jonathan Burke and Benjamin Burke. Their first full-length game, Hope End, established their unique blend of escape room and immersive theater. Eliently mixing story puzzles an adventure into one of Southern California's preeminent experiences. Welcome, Adam, John and Benjamin. Thank you. This is great to have you on Hope and honestly exploded onto the SoCal scene. I beta-tested this. I played it when there was no hype and I could not get over what you've created. And it's good to see that it's lived up to the hype because I was definitely responsible for a lot of that. I played it after the hype had to build up and it lived up to it. Glanty here it's. Let's get started by learning a little bit about each of you. I want to talk about your backgrounds, what you were doing before making Hope End and what are some of the skills that you've brought into it. Let's start with Adam. I come from a finance background. I have my degree through University of Irne and Business. And so I had been working with a wealth management team out of Claremont, California for about four years before we start venturing into this industry. I also like to do homehands so prior to doing this. I was doing my own homehands. I was helping others with homehands and prop builds and avid escape room enthusiasts, especially at the time. I think I probably had about 50 under my belt around 2016-2017. That's a lot for back then. Yeah, it was a lot and the community was still fairly small, it seemed like, but there were still a lot of new venues and the industry was still trying to find its own place. But that's my background into coming into the escape room industry and the immersive room. Okay, Jonathan, how about you? So for me, my undergraduate degree was in philosophy and my master's degrees in linguistics. So if you're asking how those fed into starting an escape room, the answer is hubris, which is you'll notice a continuing theme for the ministry of peculiarities. But I love puzzles. I was massively into geocaching and the early odds. And it was really hanging out with Adam and he started dragging me along to escape rooms that really made me fall in love with that. And then after that, he dragged me to immersive theater and we took one look and said, this is what we want to do. And so we decided to marry the two. My wife, Lisa's background is in linguistics and she's always inventing new and interesting ways to apply that. Sometimes more directly and sometimes the connection is tenuous, but she's just really good at stuff. Yeah, I think there is more of a connection than one would immediately realize. This sounds like the exact kind of thing that I'm going to want to talk to you about in the bonus episodes. We're going to do that. So Benjamin, how did you get dragged into this? Yeah, you know, same thing. I don't really have a background in anything relatable. I studied English and psychology in college. And I was teaching a broad, which I had been doing for a number of years. And Jonathan and Adam contacted me when I was living in New Zealand saying, we're thinking about starting this. You got to come back and get involved. And so that was back in in 2017, 2018. So Benjamin, you are one of the main actors that greet guests when they come into the escape room. Do you have an acting background? I took a class in university. I mean, you've performed before though to be clear. I was in some high school productions in college. Do you do a great job at it? Oh, thank you. It frankly annoys me how much better at acting he is than I am. The secret is I am as ridiculous a character as I am in real life. So it's very easy. I've always said that I can't act, but I can play myself pretty well. Okay, so then I know that you said Adam had contacted Jonathan and said, let's do an escape room. But how did the core idea for the Ministry of Peculiarities come about? What were some of the main influences? The ministry really is just an amalgamation of so many different influences. So it's really hard to nail down just one. But little known fact, we prior to doing the Ministry of Peculiarity said put something together and had spoke with the people involved with a series of unfortunate events. And as a solution because Daniel's son, the author, was really into escape rooms and was interested in seeing the story come to life in escape rooms. And so we were in discussion with the author and the publisher and the lawyers and eventually that did not go anywhere. But we really liked the world that was there. And we wanted to see something that was obviously I don't think anybody looks at the Ministry and thinks series of unfortunate events. But I think you could probably see some of the influences there. Yeah, I can really see that. I wouldn't have organically gotten there myself, but there is a line. There's a line. But I don't think anybody would look at the two and then immediately point to it. But if we had never mentioned these, I think that's probably a big influence as far as just like the feel. And then of course, as far as influences directly, I don't know. I think Jonathan and I really like the idea of just a really underutilized government agency that's defunct and loves bureaucracy and red tape and all the intricacies of just making things overly difficult for no reason. We found the humor in that. And I think you get a little taste of that when you come in and instead of playing a video on a screen, we have a 1960s prop up screen that goes over to a little slide projector that is manually operated. And we make things very difficult on ourselves. And that's all intentional. I love the idea of that because at its core, a game is basically taking a story and then setting up a series of obstacles for the main characters to overcome. So it makes sense that you've latched onto the idea of bureaucracy because that's basically what it is. It's a series of obstacles for all of us to overcome. And bureaucracy is also a series of unfortunate events. One of our major influences is time spent at the DMV. Oh yes. Absolutely great equalizer. The puzzles write themselves because naturally life can be difficult. In terms of escape room influences, one of the ones that definitely inspired me was, I believe it's called the Cromwell Estate. It's long gone where you had to like break into a house or something like that. And just the idea of starting outside was something that really stuck with me. It was like, this is something I really want to do on the subject here of where you're placing that magic circle. It feels like you've taken the concept of immersion to a different level by constructing your magic circle in the website and in the lobby. And you were sort of pulled into the ministry before you ever start playing the game. What is driving that? There's a few things. One of them is our experiences playing different escape rooms back in the day. And I suppose even now and I've heard you talk about this, David, in some of your talks. But the idea of having a compelling lobby experience, right? Sometimes the lobby can be kind of corporate or sterile. Thank you. Steril is the word I was looking for. In fact, yeah, corporate or sterile. And we didn't want that, you know, like sitting through all of the safety briefings and the do this, don't do that. Okay. Now, you know, you're waking up in a forest in the Siberia. It was too jarring. And then even like at the end, you saw the final puzzle, you opened the door and there's like a quasi enthusiastic GM there to greet you. These were the things that we wanted to avoid. To add to that, I think we once heard an excellent point. And maybe Jonathan could tell me who we heard this from. But the moment your participants come to your website, that's the moment that immersion starts. And immersion starts at the time that they book. Immersion starts with the email they receive. Immersion starts with a conversation that they have with you. And that should never be broken unless it's intentionally done for legal purposes. And we found our groups that we've had to essentially go through. For example, our FAQs are no longer cryptic and some of them are, but not as much. And how dare you bring this up? I'm sorry, I'm pretty. I thought it was, I thought it was genius. And look, I have no problem with the way that we did it. To be honest, I thought it was great. And it was so entertaining. But go ahead. Let's talk about the controversy. Oh, Lord. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'll just say, you know, PG called us out for changing the FAQs, which was something that, yeah, I definitely originally wrote to be in world. And the thing about the ministry is, I don't know how in detail we want to get, but we were struggling at the beginning to be known. And so I made some SEO changes to the FAQs to try and remedy that a little bit, but I did try to still keep it in world, answering the question first and doing the flavor text afterwards. I have been joined with the idea of returning it to the original state. That's absolutely ridiculous. I think that why he did is mitigating a lot of phone calls is what I'm saying. So it's smart that we did it the way that we did it. It's way more entertaining the way originally was intended. But there's lots of things with a site that are still great. The radio, I don't know if you guys toyed with the radio. Of course, there's secret files that are hidden on the website, back pages that you can't really get to unless you know some code words and have figured out some stuff. So there's definitely pros and cons to your approach for somebody who's an experienced player like myself. We were delighted by the website. I remember the original FAQ. I went on and on about it to David. I thought it was so funny, but it was a little bit cryptic. And I can understand why people who aren't as familiar with escape rooms or immersive experiences will be a little bit confused. So it's a really difficult balancing act. Same with we had a question about the booking times. And I remember Tommy told us he was like, they replied in character. And this was so exciting. And he showed it to us. And it was so funny. But again, if you're just you know, the average Joe trying to book an outing, they don't really know what they're getting into. So it's such a tough balancing act. When we first launched Recon, the reality escape convention back in 2020, a lot of our initial graphic design, photography and writing was in this very serious secret society vibe. And we very quickly ran into a lot of walls with that. And we had to more or less blink that out of existence because there were a few problems with it. One was that we didn't want this to be secret. We wanted a lot of people to come. The second was that we were causing a lot more confusion and creating far more questions than we were creating fun or enjoyment. And so we had to completely readjust the upside of this was that we allowed a lot of other people to be able to write because it wasn't in such a particular voice anymore. Yeah, that's really been a balance for us. There are still things for us that are hidden like we still don't have a sign out in front, which we've worked into our mythos. Originally, we threw around ideas like, okay, well, we're never going to be out of character. Like we wouldn't be doing an interview like this or maybe we'll always wear masks or something. Obviously those fell by the wayside. So I mean, I hear you. It's been a balance. We've had to feel out through experience on that subject throughout the ministry. And everything you've made, you're creating this unified narrative world that comes with the benefit of this wonderful experiential cohesion, especially for people who poke and prod and dig more deeply into it. But it also comes with a lot of these burdens because anything under the ministry of peculiarities brand has to fit within this very quirky world you have built. I'm curious what you at this point are seeing as some of the major pros and the major cons to that. I think you pretty much were very pointed with your question because it answers the question right away is that we are really constrained within the ministry's world. But while that might limit our creativity as far as maybe being able to do like, I don't know. You're not doing the pirates of the Caribbean game. We're not going to do a Pirates of the Caribbean or a jail cell. But who knows maybe what that has forced us to do is actually it's more of a challenge of creativity. And I think that's where you start getting into more of a unique scenario or a haunted house is not necessarily in itself unique, but maybe the approach of the haunted house is. And so that's where our creativity starts coming from a different angle. And I think that's what catches people off is I'm expecting a pirate ship, but I didn't expect it to be navigated by Higgins and he doesn't know how to navigate a ship. We have to come from a different angle on things. So it's definitely forcing a lot more creativity. And I think that's a positive. It's also a challenge. That sounds great actually. When you said pirate ship, I immediately thought about how so we interviewed AJ Jacobs last season. And his next book is called A Year of Living Constitutionally. And he talks about what was it called David articles of article one section eight letters of mark and reprisal back in the day. You could apply to Congress to become like a legal pirate. And you had to go through bureaucracy. You had to jump through these hoops so that you could get your fishing boat branded as a pirate to go attack enemies of the state. And so immediately when you said pirates and I was like, I could totally see you guys doing a pirate game where you know, you're jumping through these political hoops. And maybe that's part of it is trying to become a pirate yourself. But I really like the take that you have on that where you've got this brand. Yes, does it limit you? Maybe. But now you've got a quirky spin. You can take any trope actually and put your own spin on it. And so I think having an overarching world is always really fun, especially for people who are fans of your work. And that gives you leeway to put like Easter eggs and nods to other games in there because it's still within world. One of the things that's kind of a reason spontaneously here is as we gather on actors, we've let them create their own lobby character. Most of them started as actors in the room. And so they witnessed and you've dropped on a lot of the antics that happened out here. And so I think they got the idea of what the world was supposed to be. And so when they started moving into the lobby and doing the lobby experience, they created their own characters and they are hilarious. Sometimes I'm in the back working on something and I hear them interacting with the audience and I'm just rolling back there. And the fact that they've been able to do that with no guidance, but still stay within the world. That sounds me. That's awesome. The last thing I wanted to add is that like if you look at the ministry, it is a reflection of a lot of our likes, interests and dislikes as well. So it's not a huge stretch for us to stay constrained by some of the limits that the ministry has set up. 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 new Android app available in the Google Play Store now. I believe in Morty so much that I have a stake in it as an advisor. If anyone missed it last season, Morty launched an Android app. You can finally use Morty on your Android device and it's great. You should absolutely go and download this from the Google Play Store. This Android app is now in addition to its other suite of available places to interact with the app. You can go to their website, you can use the iPhone app, which so many of us have been using for so long. Morty is broadly available now. So wherever you want to look for escape rooms, Morty is there for you to find them. You can learn more at morty.app/repod. That's R-E-P-O-D to sign up and get a special badge for our listeners. So you talked a little bit about the acting and performance is a very large part of what makes hope and unique and it's a key part of the experience. And I know you said that the actors take on their own roles with little guidance, but there must be some type of guidance or training when it comes to hiring these actors. What do you look for in a performer? One of the things that we've insisted on is working with trained actors and for the most part working actors as well, which has been a struggle to keep a full staff while people are pursuing independent productions at the same time. And we really try and figure out whether the actor is going to be able to interact with the audience in a way that's compelling. So script is important, but what's even more important is playing the character to the audience and improving in a way that still makes sense within the world that we've created. I have a question and we may cut this if it feels too spoilery, but I was really impressed with the actor because they speak in rhyme. They've got this kind of monologue and it's all rhyming. But when we were interacting with them, they were responding to us in rhyme still. So I got to know, is that totally improvised or do you have written rhyming prompts that are like answers that they've already rehearsed in practice? The rhyming thing was something we went back and forth on so many times at the very beginning of this is this going to be lame is this going to work. I still sometimes wonder like if this was a bad idea and we should stop doing it, but to answer your question directly, we have a number of couplets that they can use in response to different things that the players say. And by now we pretty much know everything anything a player is going to say we've seen before. So they're not just freestyle rhyming. I would love that. I would say at one point they were. Do you have an example of some of those couplets? I wrote them. See you have to recite them. Is that their bad blame me? Yeah, someone asks, you know, who are you and she'll respond mistress of this manner where I sit an air is a queen, a derelict. I whose prosperity has faded from sight. I whose servants once called Mrs. Right. And that's the name of the character. Deep cut. We don't hear that one very often. I love it. I think it just really sets the tone for the entire experience and it just lets you know we're not in Kansas anymore we're not in a zoo's that we're stepping into something that's a little bit weird. It's a little bit old fashioned. It makes it feel cohesive on this subject throughout the entire lobby experience of the ministry of peculiarities and it also permeates into the games you've crafted this world that gives permission. To play you're using humor you're using magical gags you're using some weird quirky stuff. Can you break down the value of bringing this type of play into the overall experience. I think you really have to nail on the head that is nearly foremost to us the idea that coming to do an escape room or immersive theater is an invitation to play. It's an invitation to take on a different role than my everyday corporate life or whatever to be clear we have tried many gags some have had longevity some we've done once instead we're never doing that again. And part of it is trying to reach a diversity of types of people like what are they going to be into we have a character that comes and reads the bones. And we have a character that just sits there and the other characters complain about the fact that he's there so that's part of it. Part of it is world building you know we'll have an idea that we want to try out and maybe it's in beta for something we're planning down the road and so we'll do it in the lobby. Those are the things that come to mind for me in terms of value. What's the gag that you tried once and failed why do you think it failed others there's so many can you think of one. Do you like biting into a banana three times each showing how about that one that's a good one banana with appeal on by the way. Okay so we have this weird exit in the back hidden away and so we had a couple of characters one of which was me all own up to it and we were stuck in a time loop so we would come in the front door put our coats on the rack. Grab a piece of fruits and bite into it while we were having this conversation just kind of not just not trying to attention to ourselves and then we would walk straight back to the exit and put on a different coats and come back in the front door and do the same thing and by the third iteration I was taking a bite of the banana with the peel and it just. It sounds funnier than it actually is and so we did it once and never did it again. I was laughing the whole time I thought it was great because I was in the one biting into the banana but I got to be honest with you that sounds wonderful for everybody but the person biting into the banana peel. I mean yeah so is this a gag that you would do just as part of the escape room experience like in the waiting lobby. Yeah when we have groups that show up early enough we do all kinds of things over the past years we developed quite a repertoire I should say mostly Benjamin. A pre show it's like when you show up early to start a saline you get a pre show. So the message here is don't be like me when I visited the ministry of peculiarities and have massive car problems and show up late and very worried. We were sweating that one for sure. Yeah I felt bad. Buzzshot is a escape room software powering business growth player marketing and improving the customer experience. They offer an assortment of pre and post game features including robust waiver management branded team photos and streamlined review management for Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google reviews and Morty. Buzzshot now also has integration with our other repot sponsors Morty and Cogs. Buzzshot automates the branding for your team photos. You can add overlays including your company logo, the name of the escape room and there's countless possibilities for seasonal promotions like holiday graphics or birthday parties. Buzzshot helps create memories for your guests. Streamline your marketing and grow your escape room business. Repot 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. Quarkiness feels like a core value of not just the ministry of peculiarities but I think maybe the three of you as humans. Is that a good read? I would say that's accurate. If by Quarky you mean extremely awkward. No we're all quarky in our own right David. I think that's a good read. I love it. I think it feels like you are all unique individuals who have decided to go and turn the uniqueness of yourselves into this unusual institution that makes weird stuff. And I think it's really cool. Yeah, thank you. Connect the actors and knowing that Jonathan that you have a background in linguistics. We've already talked about the rhyming schemes and all of the different quirky gags that are being played throughout the ministry. But it does feel like you are using language in very specific ways throughout your experience. Am I right about that? Absolutely. The writing of Hope and actually the writing of anything we've written has been a I was going to use the word excruciating but instead I'll use the word painstaking process where we have tried to be very deliberate about what we're putting out there and wording is so important in creating tone and setting the mood and getting things across. We try to use that to create this sense of whimsy or bureaucracy at times. And then in terms of hope and I think a great example of using language as an asset is in the dining room scene where we have an interaction between the actors and some tech. And in one couple of that actors trying to get across the nature of her relationship with a different family member and then that family member also responds the crafting of that was very deliberate and very difficult. I'll ask the same question about movement the projector scene during the introduction that feels like everything about the movement there is particular is that also a thing. I'll personally say that I think about movement when I'm drawing people into the lobby one of the things that I try to do is introduce people to the space and so when they come in. I'll drag one person over to this filing cabinet we have over there send one person over to the Victrola one person to the phone booth to explore that just to try and encourage exploration talking about choreography and movement. Yeah, it's definitely I think of it as a play and I'm conscious of how people are observing it. We have a couple of actors that have been with us for a long time and they've helped somewhat with that theatrical background of blocking this is where you should be this is what you should be doing a lot of that is more relevant. with hope in itself. But when I worked the lobby, sorry for any of those that get me instead of Benjamin, I know when I'm setting up the projector screen, this is what I'm saying, or this is the point at which I'm bringing over the projector and all that's very deliberate. That's one of the things, David and I have talked about this before also, but we really love how you make such a production out of dragging this projector out, which is on like an old, rickety, metal rolling table. It's really loud. It's a little bit obnoxious. You got to find the cord and plug it in and you use the projector to show the rules and it turns what's normally a really boring part of the experience and our eyes are glazed over someone's droning, reading off the rules. And instead it's it's a spectacle and we're all watching for like what's going on? What's happening here? And it just makes it such a fun part of the experience. It's obnoxiously compelling. That's an interesting combination. Let's dive into your game, Hope End, which has taken me a ridiculously long amount of time to not say hopes and because the game is called Hope End, where did this name come from? It came from me. I named it. So literally the family that we're talking about is it's the Hope family. Also hope end is a real place for those that wish to deep dive into that. I thought so I was told when I came in that you had bought parts of was it a church or something like that facade that outside facade and it came with the sign. It did not come with a sign, but the stained glass was salvaged from a church. Yeah. Yeah. Circa 1911. It's good stained glass. So hope end is a real place. You're playing with the word play of the family, the hopes and what seems like the end of the line for them as a family. How did the game itself come to fruition? What was the process for you guys? Back in the very early days, we're talking like maybe 2017 or something like that. We all started working on different projects. Hope end was the one that I started and thought about ways in which that could be integrated into an escape room. I thought like, okay, the very first thing we need to have is a story. And so that's kind of what I wrote and hashed out with Adam and Benjamin first. And the inspiration behind that story is my family essentially because hope end is a story about family dysfunction and that kind of thing. So when I wrote hope end, it started as a meditation on family dynamics. And I think it's very reflective in both the story that you're telling in this game, but also it's incredibly reflective in the gameplay, which is frankly unusual to see such a deep, thematic loop that is tying story and so many different aspects of play together. When we wrote hope end, it was originally a much more serious experience. I think especially the dynamics that you see in the lobby hadn't really bled into the story as much as they have. And I think rightly so. I'm very happy with how it came out. But just to give you some indication of the way things have changed, we had the Victorian poetry. We have all of these lines that our actors recorded that have been cut. And again, I feel rightly so just as the story kind of evolved over time and the ethos behind the ministry also evolved. It's very cool that this game is a living entity. And it sounded to me like when I played it, he evolved quite a bit from when PG had played it. And it sounds like if I were to go back and play it again, I would see a lot of additional evolution in terms of the way that you're pulling all of this stuff together, which is really neat. I didn't realize that was happening to the extent that it is, but with all of the actor driven interaction and just freeform play, it makes sense that is going to be a natural byproduct of the process. I think the freeform play one of the side benefits is that people want to come back and play it again because you are doing these gags because I feel like you could come back and have a different experience. And I remember when Lisa came out to visit LA and they were booking teammates for their games, she said that hope in particular had a very large number of people who were like, I've already played it, but I really want to go back and play it again with you. And so that might be a fun byproduct of all of these extra things that you're putting into it. That rarely happens, by the way. We rarely have locals who are like, oh, you're going to that game. I want to jump in. I promise I won't solve anything that I've done already, but I really want to go and see some parts of this. And it was, I think Lisa had to say no to quite a few people when we came out to play. Moving on from Hope End, in 2022, you took the fan favorite prize at the Los Angeles immersive invitational for your 12 minute production recalcitrant research. Can you tell us about this experience? Right. So the immersive invitational, it was like a 48 hour, like a film festival competition, but we need together an immersive production. I just want to say like this was our first foray into immersive theater proper. I don't know if that's the right term. I felt it was a stretch for myself, especially under the conditions of pressure. So for me, it was kind of the litmus test of like, okay, can we do this further? Like Benjamin said, there's points I was close to tears over that 48 hour period. But for me, the answer was yes, yes, this is the sort of thing I want to do in the future as well. It was a great experience. It's probably helpful that you already have brand identities in a world that you want to build within. So in 2023, at the overlook film festival in New Orleans, I know you created an immersive game called lingering echoes. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Okay. So lingering echoes, it all revolves around this device called the Vitafone. And so we were called because we received a message from someone concerned about a person that was disappearing and disappearing. That was our kind of little teaser that we put out there for lingering echoes where we were being called to our field office in New Orleans because they needed assistance in this person that was coming in and out of reality. Lingerie echoes was this short run that was the framework for the immersive production of the overlook immersive game that involved some people from Magic Castle, E3W. And there's several others unique was also there doing his production. There was a lot of good stuff. Was that undersigned? Yes, undersigned. It was escaping my memory, but it's such a great concept. And I wish I would have been able to do it. Some of us were able to actually participate. undersigned maybe my personal favorite immersive theatrical production of all time. Oh wow. That was a incredible experience for me. And I hope to get him on the show one day. He shared some of that prior to us collaborating over concept of how to introduce his. We were working as the framework for onboarding essentially for a lot of these productions, but along that we also created a game where we were trying to solve this mystery of this person that's coming in this entity who is our brotherford. And so we had ministry agents there, Gertrude who was our parapsychologists and interviewing people as they went to some of these immersive productions and asking them if they saw anything weird, were they feeling anything weird. And so we're bringing this more theatrical way of debriefing people and giving them some room to talk about what they got to see, what they got to experience. And then also taking that and then building it into a world of this emotional turmoil is what's creating this problem here. What you're experiencing, your emotion, your experience, your reaction to these productions. It's what's manifesting this entity. And I guess we can spoil it. I don't think it's going to be a remount. We may have a part two who knows, but we built this device and it looked like it was something out of time that took the vibrations of sound and film and everything's vibrating and through those vibrations we were able to bring this person back to life. And that was the crescendo and the final moment of our production there where he comes back to life. And you had to side where you with a ministry or where you with a curtrude who was trying to bring this person back and who were you with. And so we had a lot of black hatters obviously at overlook who really wanted to play. Let's bring him back. We use that terminology of the emotion and what was bringing it. And we created a device to send Rutherford back to where he came from. And so we have some great photos that you may have seen of Higgins carrying around these big tube lamps. And as he got close to people, Glow Brider. And so as a Glow Brider, he was collecting all these emotions and then it powered up the machine to send him back from where he came. That sounds really cool. Yeah. So in terms of player experience, it was a departure from what we had done with Hope End, even with the immersive invetational where it's a game that was spread out over the course of three days. We had characters around New Orleans even. And so our we're working for hours. on end because it was just an open world where people could go and experience a scripted scene that would happen at 10 a.m. and then after that they were given a task and they would go and try to perform that at any point during the day. And so it was really interesting to be able to create that that felt people were living this thing. It wasn't just a scenario that they were buying a ticket to. They were interacting with these characters at one point. They are asked to torture a character without giving away too much there or I don't know, getting us in trouble with the authorities. They had to bury a body. We had some fun and a special thank you to all the actors that were there. We had Mike Eastman who also worked with us during the invetational. There's Langley, Emma Cune and Nina Chapman. Yes. And I will also say my wife, Jess Camudi, was also involved there. And so thank you to all of them. It really made it special. It was very tiring I think out of everything we've done. This was one of the more stressful productions. You're looking at basically the team, the production team right here. Anytime they pitched in, any hands or anything, they usually volunteered that time. So it was a great help in putting it together. That was a big production for us. It sounds massive and sprawling and it really sounds like people were just getting to live all of the different dreams. You get to torture someone, you get to hide a body. You're really working on all of the wish fulfillment right here. That sounds like so much fun. Richard Burns wrote a piece on room escape artists about length of time spent in immersive experiences. And there is really something to it. And more and more, I find myself gravitating towards long experiences because when someone's created a compelling world, I don't want only an hour. And I feel David knows I have massive FOMO. I want to look in every crevice and corner and see it. And one of those people that when I read a series, books that I really like, I get kind of depressed when you know I'm on the last book and I have to say goodbye to all these characters. So three days spent with my favorite characters in a world that's really fun and weird and bizarre. It just sounds like a blast to me. Length of time and experience is this really powerful tool as long as you have the team that can fill that time properly. They also always get worried about it when we start talking about it too much because length of time is magic. It really, you need time to get sucked into an experience. And for some people, by the time they are sucked in in an hour experience, they might be 30, 40 minutes into it. And then they have 20 minutes where the magic really comes together. And you can do a lot more if you tack on another 30 minutes or an hour or five hours past that. And that comes at incredible cost to the production, to the operations and to the participants. And so it's one of those things where I see the power of it and I love it when people explore it. But also hear the exhaustion in your collective voices when you talk about running a three-day city-wide experience. And I don't want to lose track of the costs of time. Yeah, it definitely stretched us then. I think we're getting like two, three hours of sleep every night. It was pretty rough. Up early to go do the setup, get our people ready. Got to get the coffee for them in the morning. And that's when you're doing a whole day like that where it was probably 10 to 12 hours of having people there. It's trying to run the production where you have breaks. And then not only the breaks, but now it's like who's going to get food while we have people that are coming over here for onboarding. And I would love to say that we did it 100% awesome, knocked it out of the park, but it was a challenge. And I'm glad you see that. If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. Nothing is ever going to be perfect. And that's also sort of a core ten end of us as reviewers is that nothing is perfect. And that's not a knock on creators. That is an acknowledgement of practical reality. Even if you make something amazing, there's always an opportunity for more, which it sounds like in the case of hope and you are always finding ways to push on the boundaries of what you've created, which I love and respect so much. And I also want to say I really appreciate all the hard work you put into your productions. It really pays off. Anytime there is an event in Southern California, we have Nerd Day, which is like an enthusiast meetup a day to celebrate escape rooms for enthusiasts. And anytime Ministry of Peculiarities shows up, you guys make a full production out of it. I always look forward to your experiences the most because you come in full characters and with sets and you really go all out and I definitely appreciate it. So I want you guys to know that we do notice it and it's worth it. And so I'm also wondering what comes next. Are you planning on any additional escape rooms or experiences, any new projects that you want to talk about or share with us? We have a few things in the works. We are getting our second room open. Those of you that are attending Recon should expect our second experience. This information has never been released before, but our second experience is called Apotheosis. That's what you can expect. What does Apotheosis mean? It's worth a search. This is very mysterious and I cannot wait to come and find out what it's truly about. What is the best way for people to follow your work or connect with you online? You can always follow us on Instagram and Facebook that's at the Ministry of Piquiliaries on both of those. But you can find both those links on our website, the ministryofpiquiliaries.com. We'll have links for all of that in the show notes. Adam, John Benjamin. Thank you so much for joining us. I truly appreciate how quirky and how diligent and how prone to excess the three of you are in the way that you craft and produce and think about the work that you're making. As somebody who also cares probably too much about the details and the finer points of presentation and cadence and all sorts of other minutia that can so quickly get left on the cutting room floor, I just wanted to say to you that I see what you're doing and I see what your audience gets, but also what it takes out of you and I appreciate it so very much. So thank you for that and thank you for sharing all of these insights and lessons and just sharing your quirky selves with us. Thanks so much, David. Speaking for myself, I have been floored by the reaction to Hope And I'm a perfectionist which is kind of what you're alluding to a little bit. And up until we opened Hope and I was convinced that I had helped create a total flop and so I've just been overwhelmed and just so grateful to the positive response that we've gotten. It's well earned. Thanks guys. Thank you both for having us on today. It's been a pleasure. 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Our location is in kind of a CD strip and our immediate neighbors are a massage parlour and an income tax place. We tend to keep our front door locked, but one day we were in the middle of resetting the room and didn't have anybody in the lobby. And we had been in the room for, I don't know, 15-20 minutes. And we hear like a "out in the lobby." And so we come out and there's a person sitting here and we're like, "Can we help you?" And he was looking for a massage. I don't know what he was expecting. But so we gave him one. Just kidding. That's perfect.