On 18-19 November 2023, our team was honoured to partner with the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC) to bring and adapt one of our all time’s favourite virtual murder mystery games “The Golden Feather Thief” into an in-person experience, completed with a new physical escape room clue search element.
Note: A Role Playing Murder Mystery Game is a game in which each player in a group takes on a character or suspect in a crime. Each character has his or her own secrets, which he or she must hide from other players while working with everyone to find the culprit. In this experience we offered a physical clue search area where players will investigate the room of each suspect. Each room will have a puzzle and upon solving the puzzle successfully, more clues on the respective character could be found to aid in the big-picture investigation.
Transforming an empty space into the "Holy Temple"
The Inspiration
From the trailer, our players were aware of the important role of the Holy Temple, its intricate security system and architecture in the storyline. As such we were determined to ensure that the clue search area could mimic the layout of the Holy Temple as much as possible. Our team embarked on a journey of architectural and floor plan mapping, interior visualisation and logistics planning to make the clue search area, comprising of a series of escape rooms and challenges, as immersive as possible and is able to bring small delight and surprise to players upon successful puzzle solving.
The Room Concepts
Tasked to create educational content on various aspects of the Chinese culture, our team meticulously crafted different unique themes for each escape room, conveying several unique learning moments that also contributed to the big storyline:
Main Gate - The Guardian’s Test: Five Elements of Heaven and Earth
Monkey Praying Hall - The Prank of the Monkey God: The Matrix Illusion
Goat Praying Hall - Whisper of the Goat God: Hidden Depths of the Mystic Manuscript
Ox Praying Hall - The Hard Work of the Ox God: Chasing Shadows
Mouse Praying Hall - The Wisdom of the Mouse God: Checkmate
The Treasure Chamber - The Celestial Convergence: The Legend of the Phoenix
From Concept
To Actual Setup
Storytelling
In this experience, we took storytelling and the narrative to a whole new level with high-quality production and animations, carefully weaved in at different junctures of the game to immerse players in the experience.
On top of the physical venue transformation efforts, our consistent quality in game sets, mechanics, game master interaction, AV production and simple dress-up props also helped bring out the storyline better, enable players to role play as different game characters to uncover the plot’s central mystery.
Capacity and Traffic Management
Tasked to design an experience for 1000 pax within 1 weekend, our team divided the game into 3 stages, taking place at different locations within SCCC and planned game masters and usher resources to ensure the smooth flow of traffic for all the concurrent teams.
Players are welcomed and facilitated in their discussion at Level 7, brought down to Level 6 Creative Box for the Escape Room Clue Search experience, and eventually guided to Level 9 to wrap up the voting, discuss the game experience and unveil the truth together.
In our planning, we also took into account walk-in registrations and team grouping on-the-spot to ensure the game capacity and design could accommodate different pax scenarios.
Thank you...
Thank you all players who have come down to join us for this experience, and shared with us your thoughts and feedback. This is among our first few attempts at offline game experience and your enjoyment and appreciation of the game has made all the hours and efforts put into this so worth it. Our AveLIVEX team will continue to improve and deliver high-quality and unique game experiences to you! Stay tuned!
Thank you SCCC team for your partnership and giving us the opportunity to make this aspiration a reality! We are grateful for your trust and collaboration, and we look forward to working with your team again in the future!
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