A little bit of construction, mixed with a bit of spice
Firstly, The Enigma Room wishes all our escapees a happy New Year! We hope you had some fun over the break while we were getting things ready for our launch.
After my last blog and the reveal of our second theme there were two people in the comments who recommended a movie that explored some similar themes to “In Memoriam”. The movie is called Paprika, a Japanese anime movie, and you can check out the English dub here.
My wife and I were looking for something to do on New Year's Day that involved sitting on the couch and this movie filled that role just fine.
Paprika was generally entertaining, although the narrative was a bit strange at times, especially because you're never sure whether the scene you are currently watching is in the dream world or real world. By the end of the movie, that delineation between the two is almost non-existent, so these moments can be a bit confusing. This movie was actually one of the main inspirations for the Christopher Nolan movie “Inception” so I can see where people drew the link between our game and the movie, especially since we cited Inception as one of our references.
That said though, the themes in the game differ to those in the movie slightly. The movies focus in on entering someone’s dreams, and because they are dreams, reality can become distorted leading to many different plot mechanisms (Paprika featured several scenes of a parade led by a walking refrigerator… you see, reality, distorted). In Memoriam focuses on a group of doctors entering a patient’s subconscious to explore their memories. I guess I'm trying to say that In Memoriam is a little less, "trippy".
Remember, escape games are all about finding objects, determining their purpose and finding ways to put them together to solve the puzzle. If you were to come across any bi-pedal white goods, I don't think we could all agree on their purpose, let alone how you could use them to solve a puzzle.
If you get some time and you are a fan of anime, you should really check it out if you haven't already.
Now the title of this post mentioned something about construction. Here’s the scoop.
WE’VE STARTED BUILDING!!!!!!111
Finally we have jumped over some of many many hurdles placed in front of us by the relevant authorities and have begun our construction work (you can check out some photos in the carousel above). We are not completely there yet, as we have yet to jump over all the hurdles, but we’re getting closer. Soon we should be able to begin beta testing Dr Disaster and from there, it’s over to you!
We will keep you up to date on the build as it progresses, but in the meantime, if you end up watching Paprika let us know what you thought in the comments!
Barry
Matt - Enigma Room Staff January 05, 2015
"If you were to come across any bi-pedal white goods, I don't think we could all agree on their purpose, let alone how you could use them to solve a puzzle." Thanks Barry, now I'm going to spend all night thinking of a puzzle involving a walking refrigerator. Totally doable.