“We Need You to Take the Battery Out”

Jamie Fassett-Carman and Mark Larson

This presentation is about how Trapped Puzzle Rooms, a local Minneapolis institution, ended up building an escape room in Anaheim, CA, in a convention hall, in an ambulance. We’ll discuss the unique challenges of that project and our process for creating real-world puzzle experiences. We’ll touch on the way we think about puzzles and puzzle-design, and finally we’ll recommend some puzzle experiences and resources that many people, even within the “escape room community”, are not familiar with. We’ll say the word “puzzle” a lot.

Jamie Fassett-Carman co-founded Trapped Puzzle Rooms with his mom five years ago, creating one of the first escape room companies in the Twin Cities. He grew up in Minneapolis, and has been solving puzzles and playing games as long as he can remember. He is a member of the second-best Puzzled Pint team in the world (as of 02/03/20). His real dream is to design an escape room that slowly fills up with water, but he hasn’t yet found a way to make it meet building code.

Mark Larson has been designing and executing interactive experiences for over a decade, with the last three years spent creating escape room and puzzle experiences. At Trapped Puzzle Rooms, Mark works closely with Jamie as the company’s Project Lead for an exciting upcoming project. He’s been puzzling his entire life, and has made a career out of designing just about anything, from board games to theatrical productions, and now immersive experiences like escape rooms and puzzle hunts. He also uses spreadsheets just for fun.

Producing Parody Prototypes

Mike Lacher

Mike will be sharing his process for rapidly building satirical games that respond to topical events. How do you take a funny idea, throw code and spritesheets at it, and quickly make something actually playable?

Mike Lacher is a writer, developer, and co-founder of Everyday Arcade, an Emmy-nominated studio that makes satirical games about news and culture. Their games include Thoughts and Prayers: The Game, Bomb The Right Place, and most recently for the New York Times, Privacy Chicken.