Escape Room Puzzle Box (Scale Model)
This project was part of an assignment to develop an escape-room like experience for my 2nd Purdue Themed Entertainment Design course. We were asked to go into detail with one part of the concept and attempt to fabricate an example for our project with what we had on hand. I chose to prototype a scale model of a large 4-½ foot tall interactive puzzle box that would be found in the center the room as a central focal point of the puzzle experience. The box would have several puzzles & mystery elements worked into it that would engage multiple guests at once while also encouraging them to explore the environment of the themed room. The initial inspiration was from some of my research into puzzle boxes and history with escape-room style experiences, with additional design influence inspired by interactive puzzle video games like The Room, We Were Here, and Myst.
The Theme
Our current theming for the experience is set in the world of Sherlock Holmes; with the escape room this puzzle box would be set in to be inside a detailed recreation of the Detective’s apartment at 221b Baker Street. The story would be that on the morning of the delivery of this mysterious puzzle box the homes suddenly went missing. Scotland Yard believing the worst they have called in your group, a collective of individuals renowned for puzzle solving to figure out the box’s purpose and its relation to Holmes’ disappearance. This illustration I made shows the layout I designed for the Holmes-themed puzzle room. I wanted a centerpiece that was tactile in nature. A statement piece in the room that could occupy several guests at once, while encouraging teamwork and individual puzzle solving at the same time.
The Puzzle Box Design
For this one-fifth scale model, I took a design that I had modeled in SketchUp for the full-size version and remodeled just the top section to have functioning door panels and an internal section for the Iris mechanism & other contents. From there, I 3D-printed the piece into sections and well as the six scale versions of puzzle elements to show what they might look like and how they function on the full-size version. I then took a laser-cut hexagonal box to replicate the base and attached the puzzle elements in their proper places. I also created a working circuit coded with an Arduino Uno showing how it would be implemented into the box to control certain puzzle functions.
Construction, Fabrication, & Cost Breakdown
When the top section and doors were done printing, they were painted and applied with a wood veneer to make it match the construction of the base section. Some elements were added to show puzzle elements inside, and I added a large 3D printed functioning iris mechanism at the top to show how the box would open. The final act of the puzzle is the iris opening and revealing an elaborate mechanism called a praxinoscope (also 3D printed) to animate a final message and display the ultimate prize (a diamond) for completing the puzzle. A Praxinoscope is an elaborate short-lived animation trick that has a slide animation shown by mirrors while rotating and seemed to be a great fit to the elaborate Victorian handcrafted look I was pursuing with the puzzle’s design. Guests could use controls to change the Praxinoscope’s rotation direction and speed to reveal a hidden message before removing the diamond it holds inside. The following cost breakdown shows roughly what went into the project once it’s made fully functional, including the cost of my 3D printer that was used and estiamted total hours worked.
