PGNOE

Summary

This project was a class-wide final with an overarching goal of causing a scene and delivering a message. At the time, the power outages had just affected our campus and the surrounding area. Several students were upset at the way PG&E was abusing their power to disrupt the lives of others instead of fixing the problem, the low quality of their infrastructure. We decided to highlight this in our work.

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As a class, we decided on a larger narrative of players entering a PG&E charging station as if during a planned outage. An actor would beckon players to the computer warning them that they may need an hour to complete the experience. Players would access a computer which, after solving a puzzle, would play a video revealing a room number in the building. Travelling to the room would prompt the actor to warn them that they had an hour before they were caught. Players would solve all of the puzzles revealing a flash drive which held vital information, be "chased" back to the main room with the computer, and plug in the flash drive to complete the experience.

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Our Puzzle

First, comes the "tutorial" for the puzzle. On the desk within the room was a lamp. It had a purple line on the bottom of the lampshade. Upon investigation, a clear cutout is on its side through which a second layer of the lampshade is revealed beneath the first. Turning on the lamp reveals a second cutout on the inner lampshade, otherwise undetectable. Lining up these cutouts reveals the number 5. While the number is unusable at first, it primes the players to the idea of lining up numbers and hints towards the importance of color.

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Next comes the note, which guides players toward the end goal of the puzzle, a currently locked book, and hints towards the meaning of the code. Most importantly, it has 4 blank spots with colored dots beneath them. A blacklight would reveal that the first 3 blanks have strange symbols above them, leaving the final space marked purple blank. This calls back to the lamp with the purple bottom, thus revealing the fourth number of the code and telling players they are looking at halves of numbers.

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The final piece is the lens which has colored half numbers on it, easily recognizable now that the player knows what to look for. When lined up correctly with the note with the blacklight shining through it, a full number would be revealed. With the full code, the lock could be opened and players could continue on with the escape room to the final puzzles.

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The Design Process

Our puzzle had to serve three purposes.

1. Keep within the themes of investigation and PG&E

2. Took input keys from multiple other puzzles and output a key for one puzzle

3. Easily understood from one step to the next (once all the pieces were available)

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The first thing we settled on was the manipulation of light and the concept of "seeing things in a new light" to achieve our first goal. That immediately took us to the blacklight which also solved our second goal since the blacklight and whatever it was to be used on were stored separately, meaning we could account for at least two inputs.

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We began with a puzzle concept where a lens would have a blacklight shine through it and project a number through the other side. This didn't end up working out. The blacklight ink was too faint on the lens and became unreadable. We wanted to keep the lens so we decided to take a new approach. We put half of the answer on the lens in solid ink and half on paper in blacklight ink. Not only did this solve the issues but it provided another potential key to begin the puzzle. However, shining a light through a random lens didn't feel intuitive enough.

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The lampshade part of the puzzle was to get around this. it required no keys to start the puzzle and was easily solved by turning on the lamp. It prompted the player to look for similar solutions by lining up numbers and shining light through things. We didn't expect players to be so familiar with blacklights but it also majorly assisted in helping players solve the puzzle.