Grant Luecke

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Introduction to Grant Luke and His Journey

[0:00] Hey everyone, welcome on today's episode of Attractions Insights. We're talking with one of the most exciting creative

[0:07] voices in the escape room world. Today, Grant Lukey of 60 Out Hollywood. Grant

[0:14] began as an actor, but quickly shifted into designing immersive worlds like

[0:20] Wizards Treasure, Big Brain Labs, and the Crux Factory experience. blending

[0:26] theatrical storytelling, hands-on fabrication, and responsive environments, Grant is helping redefine

[0:33] what modern escape rooms can be. And today, we dive into his creative

[0:38] process, the challenges behind his most ambitious builds and where he sees the

[0:43] future of immersive design heading. Let's jump in. Woo! So, Grant, you started out as an actor

[0:51] in M Jezebel before moving it to design, correct? Yeah. Do you remember the moment when you

[0:57] realized I want to build this worlds, not just perform in them? Yeah, it it was definitely not like an

[1:05] instantaneous moment. It it was it was a gradual shift over a very long time. So,

[1:10] I I started performing in the Miss Jezebel escape room. There were other escape rooms at that location. It was uh

[1:17] the 60 out downtown location. They had a game called Tiki Time, which has been revived and reconfigured into another

[1:24] game in Southern California that is very excellent called Treasure Island. They also had a game called Galaxy Quest. And

[1:30] so, aside from being an actor in Miss Jezebel, I also would run those games. And what had happened is while I was

[1:38] running the Miss Jezebel games, another opportunity came up where these other games that we were also running that

[1:44] were a little bit more traditional escape room experiences needed maintenance. and they had some tech in them and I had a very small background

[1:52] with technology. It was specifically related to 3D printers. I had like rewritten some firmware for a 3D printer

[1:59] once and so like I had looked at code before and it wasn't the scariest thing in the world to me, but I didn't really

[2:04] know much about it other than that. And at the time we had a lot of time because we weren't selling a lot of inerson

[2:10] escape rooms because of the pandemic. And so I was tasked with just figuring out how to fix some of these things. And

[2:17] so I I got a box of Arduinos and a couple RFID readers. And I went to YouTube and I looked up videos from a

[2:24] couple different YouTube channels that I'm sure other escape room technologists have heard of, like Playful Technology

[2:30] was a really big one. Another guy, Paul McHoer, he has a bunch of just general tutorials and educational videos about

[2:37] Arduinos and Raspberry Pies, all sorts of really, really fun stuff. But anyways, I went to the internet and I learned specifically how to do

[2:44] electronics for escape rooms. And it was in a really nice environment where I wasn't responsible for building an

[2:49] entire game or and I necessarily wasn't even responsible for building complete working projects. I was a game master

[2:55] and if I was able to fix it, great. And if not, then they could go hire somebody else. So the stakes were really low and

[3:01] that gave me a lot of confidence to just dive head in even though I didn't really know what I was doing. And I slowly

[3:07] learned one day at a time how to fix and replace things. And pretty soon I went from just an actor working in Miss

[3:12] Jezebel to I was doing that, but then also now I'm going around to the other

[3:17] games of the location and fixing everything that I possibly could. It started off with RFID readers, but it

[3:22] switched to, you know, like replacing buttons, switches, LEDs, read switches, you name it. The typical stuff that you'd come across in escape rooms. And

[3:29] eventually that evolved into replacing entire individual puzzles in a

[3:35] game, which again was a really great experience because I wasn't responsible for building an entire escape room. We

[3:40] had that. There was just maybe one or two puzzles that weren't working quite right. And so I had this sandbox where I

[3:47] was able to make something and put it in the game, just one difference. Everything else was the same. And then I

[3:53] would get to run the game and I'd get to watch how that worked and how groups responded to it and how they broke it.

[3:58] And then I would take it out of the game and I'd fix it and I'd put it back in. And then I'd run the game again and do that over and over again. And that was

[4:04] sort of where I really built my skills and honed them specifically towards

[4:10] escape room skills. But then also that process was what sort of tipped the

[4:16] scales. And all of a sudden, I was much more interested and excited to come to

[4:21] work to build things and to fix things than I was to just be the actor in the escape room. And then there was a lot of

[4:27] opportunity for me to take these skills and help other escape rooms out all over the Southern California community with

[4:33] these skills. And so before I knew it, a year had passed and unbelievably I had been given the opportunity to install an

[4:40] entire escape room that was already built. I just had to be installed um at 60 out Hollywood. And that was sort of

[4:46] how I went from being an actor in Jezebel to working at 60 odd Hollywood and installing a large game, which the

[4:52] whole story of Wizards Treasure, that's the game that I'm talking about, is is a another can of worms that we could

[4:58] probably get into later, but yeah, that's the that's the that's the arc of actor in an escape room to making escape

[5:06] rooms themselves. Wow. What's a story? Now, let me ask you, this is very interesting. when you

[5:13] decided to start learning about how to code and how Ard are doing work. Did this involve the company who you were

[5:20] working for uh paying you for this education or you just decided to do it for yourself by yourself? Um it was a

[5:27] little of both. I wouldn't say that I was being explicitly paid to learn how to do things. But if there was a time

[5:34] where I was scheduled as the game master and I ran a few games, then there was a break for a few hours and we had games

[5:40] later on in the evening, that would be an opportunity where I would use that downtime to spend working on

[5:45] troubleshooting the props that were there. So there certainly were instances where like, yeah, I was paid to learn

[5:51] how to code, which is like a really great opportunity, but that wasn't necessarily specifically scheduled. And

[5:58] oftent times a game would book and I'd have to drop everything I'm doing. So, in combination with that, I would also

[6:03] take it home. And I bought I used my own money to buy electronics kits. I bought one of those big Arduino kits that I'm

Transition from Acting to Immersive Design

[6:09] sure anyone who's ever worked on escape room electronics has bought at one point that has just like 50 sensors and you'll

[6:15] maybe use five of them and the other 45 are really interesting and and specific, but I still haven't taken them out of

[6:20] the package. And I would follow along with tutorials and try to hone more

[6:27] skills at home. I also took a couple classes. There was a online class that

[6:34] was provided through an education company that I think has changed their name a few times. I believe now their

[6:41] name is Studio before. I can't quite remember what it was, but there's a YouTuber, a very famous YouTuber named

[6:46] Mark Robber that had provided a class that was just called creative engineering. And it was a short

[6:52] four-week program that loosely went over things like Arduinos and coding, but it it really didn't get into really

[6:58] specific skills. it was more just about the creative process in general. Um, and that's a class that I took and

[7:04] eventually ended up taing for that class. And that was a place where I was able to give myself projects at home

[7:09] that involved using these skills like using Arduinos to program a weird funky art clock looking thing that I made or

[7:16] 3D modeling to 3D print this specific piece that I had designed for this weird robot arm that I had made. And so that

[7:23] that allowed me to keep working on things that built skills that I wasn't necessarily building at the escape room

[7:28] at the time. Um, but then also it put me in contact with other really talented,

[7:34] much more skilled than me, creators, coders that were also taking this class together that I was able to learn from

[7:40] and ask questions of and that was also really helpful. Um, so it was a little bit of both. I I I got paid to learn how

[7:46] to code, which is awesome and a very cool opportunity that probably is rare. And then also I I spent some time at

[7:51] home working myself. Grant, I can tell you that I feel you

[7:56] are one of I don't know maybe one of the thousand game masters that we that were

[8:03] willing to learn by yourself skills that necessary to run escape room

[8:09] successfully. Because I see so many other escape room game masters who rely

[8:14] heavily on somebody else to fix stuff. So they are here or they are there in

[8:20] escape room only to perform the duties that they paid for and they have no

[8:26] interest by any means to learn how to fix it, how to do any carpentry work

[8:32] specifically not how to code or build or or fix any puzzles. What do you think

[8:39] make you who you are? why you have interest to learn new things and not

[8:45] afraid to spend your time energy while the time during the time when nobody pays you for it to learn these things.

[8:52] Yeah, that's a really great question. I I guess one point of clarification is that I certainly had to learn uh quite a

[8:58] few things in order to be really comfortable and competent at working in escape room specifically on the tech

[9:04] side of things. that is I I primarily spent a lot of time learning how to code and like what is an Arduino and like why

[9:11] other than the number being bigger what's the difference between five and 12 volts and why should I care um so I did spend a lot of time learning that

[9:17] but my background is in theater and so I I I have been almost my entire life in

[9:23] an environment where I'm screwing together 2x4s painting flats you know making things making props and so I

[9:30] showed up with a lot of those skills already and when I arrived at the escape room. I had realized that this very

[9:39] large weird skill set where I know how to hang and focus a light and I know how to paint a wall and I know how to program sound effects is all useful in

[9:46] the same place just like it is for theater. And so I think that that might have made it easier for me. I think that

[9:52] if I had to learn every single one of those skills it I might be it might be a different story. But that's not to say

[9:57] that I wasn't willing to dive in and learn how to code and really embrace the

[10:06] the learning process. I can only really speak for myself and what I can tell you about myself is that I'm kind of an

[10:12] obsessive. I really fixate on things um where when I get interested in something I want to learn absolutely everything

[10:18] about it and that's really all I think about. I did this with 3D printing, you know, back in, you know, 2016, 2017. The

[10:25] very first time I saw a 3D printer, I was like, that is so cool and I want to learn everything about it. I want to learn about the different filaments. I

[10:30] want to learn about the different companies that make machines. I want to learn everything about it. And that evolved to me buying several printers,

[10:36] fixing the firmware just because it was something that I was enthusiastic about because it was super interesting to me.

[10:42] So, I have this quality where I just kind of get fixated on things. And that had happened when I started playing around with escape room technology where

[10:49] I made something and I scanned an RFID tag and it caused the lock to open and it was like absolutely magic. It was the

[10:56] coolest thing ever and it went from specifically using Arduinos and escape room tech went from something that was

[11:02] just completely out of my wheelhouse. I didn't understand it at all to something that I saw how it worked and it made a lot of

[11:09] sense and I was like this is actually really simple. you know, out at service level, I scan this thing and I write a

[11:14] piece of code that says, if you scan this thing, unlock this lock. And it did it. And I thought that that was so cool

[11:19] and I became obsessed. And so all of a sudden, I started thinking about what other projects I can be making with it.

[11:25] What other sensors or inputs and outputs could I be using that I'm not currently using. And I think that passion, that

[11:30] obsession, that fixation on escape room tech is sort of what carried me through it. I would be lying if I said that I

[11:37] was doing it because I wanted to be a really good employee. and and support the business like that. That that was also true. I wanted to help out, but it

[11:43] was it was certainly a little bit more of just I I I got hooked just a little bit by seeing something that felt like

The Creative Process Behind Wizards Treasure

[11:50] magic to me and I wanted to explore that to its fullest extent. And then I did. And now I've taken this thing that was

[11:57] previously unknown to me, escape room technology and how all that stuff works, coding, electronics and tech, and I've

[12:02] bundled that up with all my other skills of like prop making, painting, fabricating, 3D printing, CNCing. And

[12:08] it's great. I love adding more tools to my work belt. And so I think if you if there is somebody that's working at an

[12:14] escape room that has that mentality, I don't think it would be pretty hard to convince them to want to be interested.

[12:19] And in fact, here currently at 60 Hollywood, I've got an employee here. His name is Derek. He's absolutely

[12:25] awesome. And he is very interested in learning how things are built and how

[12:30] things are made. And so when we've got free time, you know, we spend it in the shop. I'm teaching him how to code. I'm teaching him how to fix things. and it's

[12:37] been an absolutely incredible asset. One, because I really love, you know, sharing skills and teaching. I I think

[12:44] that that is uh something that brings me a lot of joy. Um, and then also sort of from like a selfish standpoint, but

[12:50] that's just good for the business. Now I have somebody else here who is capable of fixing things. If something acts up

[12:55] and we need a motor to get replaced or we need to make an adjustment to some code and upload it, he's comfortable doing that. And that gives me freedom to

[13:02] if I need to take a vacation or if I'm out of town visiting family or or any any multitude of things. I'm not the

[13:09] sole person that's responsible for fixing everything. We've got somebody else that's interested. And so I I like

[13:14] I said, I can't speak for anyone other than myself, but at least in my experience and the experience at this

[13:19] escape room, if somebody if somebody's interested in learning more about uh escape rooms and you create that

[13:24] opportunity, you open up that space to them and you allow them to do it, I think that they'll probably make

[13:30] themselves known. At least that was the case with me and that's the case with Derek here. And I also any other employee I I I regularly will go up to

[13:37] them and say like, "Hey, if you're interested in working on something, if you're interested in adding something to any of the games, like come talk to me. I'd love to help you out and make that

[13:44] happen. Although I don't expect anybody to, you know, do that. Like I think it's also okay for the game master job to be

[13:50] a job where they show up and they do their job of running the games, which certainly some days can be a really

[13:55] intense job. Um, and if that's all they want to do, that's great. But if they want more, I'm I'm totally open to

[14:02] making that happen and creating that opportunity for them. Nice. Nice. Let's shift to wizards

[14:08] treasure. Okay, let's do it. Magic. Magic. Wizard's treasure is often described as

[14:15] joyful, playful, and Disneylike. What was your original creative vision for

[14:20] the room? Okay, this is very funny. My original creative vision for the room was I am

[14:25] installing a wizard themed room that somebody else built and that's all I'm doing. So, there was a game that was at

[14:32] an older 60 location. Uh, I think it was the Marina del Rey location, although that's not particularly important. It

[14:38] was a game called Wizards Workshop and it was open for several years and apparently it was it was pretty fun. I

[14:44] never got to play it but that location unfortunately had closed down. But that game was preserved. It was packed up

[14:50] into shipping containers and it was delivered to 60 out Hollywood with the intention of it getting installed and

[14:57] brought back to life at this new location. That's what I was hired to do. So, when this project began, it wasn't

[15:04] me coming up with the idea to make a wizard themed escape room and being really excited about that. It was me

[15:09] showing up to install a room that already existed. And long story short, we sorted through all of the pieces that we had been delivered and they were not

[15:16] in any shape to be installed into our space for a multitude of reasons. One,

[15:21] the floor plan of the original game did not match what we had to work with at all. More importantly, the way that the

[15:28] game had been uninstalled, it wasn't done with a lot of care and there weren't a lot of notes that were taken

[15:33] about how things were connected together. Basically, what I was working with was this very large server computer

[15:39] that I had no ability to access the co current code on. And there was about 80

[15:45] to 100 Ethernet cables in one big bundle that had all been cut and they were

[15:50] unlabeled. And then I had all the puzzles that had the other ends of those Ethernet cables and it was going to be

[15:57] probably the most complicated puzzle of my life and not even possible to plug this all back together and get it

Recognition and Impact of Wizards Treasure

[16:03] working again. So at that point it was pretty obvious that we were going to have to replace all of the tech. We

[16:10] could preserve the set pieces and reuse all of the buttons and inputs and whatnot, but I'm going to have to re

[16:15] rebuild and reprogram all of the technology to just get this game to work.

[16:20] When we realized that, we then asked ourselves, if we're going to be rebuilding all of the technology, buying

[16:26] all new Arduinos, hooking them up, writing new code, would it better serve us to open up the

[16:35] possibility of coming up with some new ideas as opposed to verbatim just installing this game that already

[16:41] exists? That was sort of my pitch. And the owners of this location agreed that that made sense that if we were going to do that, if we were going to invest the

[16:46] time and the money, it wouldn't make that much of a difference to just make something that felt a little newer and felt a little cooler and also looked

[16:54] newer and cooler because the game was open for several years and you can tell the props were really worn down. They

[16:59] could have been like repainted, but to some degree there was just no getting around the fact that like it was a used

[17:06] it was a very well-loved and wellplayed escape room. And so there would have been a lot of work going into just

[17:11] making it feel new. So once we realized that that was going to be the case, we then pivoted and we started coming up

[17:17] with new ideas and trying to figure out what we could use and what we were going to have to build totally new. I reused

[17:24] one piece, one very very small piece of the original Wizards Workshop escape room. It was a telescope on a pedestal.

[17:32] I rebuilt the telescope and I repainted the pedestal. But I I took that and I was like, we could probably use this. I

[17:37] had no idea what I was building. I did not have a plan for what the entire game was going to look like. I was just building one individual puzzle because

[17:44] at that point that is all that I had done. I had just been building individual puzzles and installing them into the game. And so defaulting back to

[17:51] what my my training was, which was just building individual puzzles. I did that. And pretty soon I realized that me

[17:58] making one puzzle does not an escape room make. And in fact, there's a lot of work here that I have not considered how

[18:05] it's going to get done. Where's the set going to come from? What's the what's the actual larger game here? Um, I was

[18:11] just focusing on one piece. I started to get really overwhelmed and I was like, I am not quite certain that I am going to

[18:18] be able to pull this off alone. In fact, I genuinely believe that I need somebody else to come onto this project to sort

[18:25] of steer me a little bit. I think I have the right skills to make this stuff, but I'm not familiar with a project of this

[18:31] scale in order to get it done. And also, it's just a lot of work to do for one person. If anyone's listening to this

[18:38] that's built an escape room mostly on your own, I'm sure you know that like that is a lot of work for one person to

[18:44] do. And so I I I decided that we needed to search for some partner to help me

[18:50] work on the game. At the time when we started searching for the partner, we weren't quite sure what we we needed, if

[18:56] we needed another tech person or a scenic artist. We ultimately decided that a scenic artist would be great and we found this guy named John Zel. He was

[19:03] a former park decorator of Disneyland and he was a scenic artist, a sculptor, a propmaker and a fabricator and

[19:10] importantly a working professional that had had a very successful career working in all sorts of various projects for

[19:17] theme parks, for film and TV. He was the kind of guy that I knew would be able to

[19:22] create a structure and create a plan. And that's exactly what he did. We brought him on board and he was immediately asking me questions that I

[19:28] should have answered a while ago like what does the set look like and what about all of the other puzzles other

[19:34] than this one telescope and I was able to answer those questions for him and then together we were able to work on a

[19:39] plan of what this game was going to become. You mentioned earlier in your initial question that this game is

[19:44] described like it's it's full of wonder and whimsy and it feels like it's could come straight out of Disneyland. That is

[19:51] because of John. the sort of tone of the game. Those that have played it will probably agree that

[19:58] uh the type of fantasy and magic that Wizards Treasure is is is not at all the

[20:05] same type of magic and fantasy of a world like Harry Potter where instead of being sort of grounded and desaturated

[20:12] and a little bit more serious and mature, it is like it's like borderline cartoon. It's really colorful. It's

[20:18] really silly. It's really whimsical. And that that totally came from John. I happened to really like that style and

[20:26] aesthetic and I think that that's really in alignment with my point of view as a creator, but that wasn't something that

[20:31] I was considering until John was brought on board. And so John, I I think really deserves a lot of

[20:38] the credit when it comes to coming up with that vision. And then once he sort of created the broad outline of what

[20:47] that was, I was able to go in and fill in all of the holes and sort of create the story and then create the gameplay

[20:53] within this initial sketch that he had created. Interesting. And this game was a trap

[20:58] finalist two years in a row. What did this recognition mean for you personally

[21:04] and for 60 out? I mean, honestly, like I it's it's a it's a I'm very honored. I I was very

[21:11] surprised. I uh uh it means a whole lot to me. I'm I'm I I'm very very proud of

[21:17] the game and very proud of all the work that uh myself and John and um all of the other artists that worked on that

[21:23] game. There's a lot of voice actors that I I'm very proud of the game. But also, one of the the things about the game

[21:29] that I thought wouldn't make it compatible with the Turpa audience, is that Wizards Treasure is a game that is

[21:36] designed to be really successful for players who haven't played a lot of

[21:42] escape rooms, maybe have played no escape rooms, or the type of player who is convinced that like they're not going to be good at escape rooms and that they

[21:48] might not like them. I wanted to make Wizards Treasure a really open and accessible experience in a lot of ways,

[21:54] both in terms of like the style of content and like what types of people are able to play the game. And because

[22:00] of that, it's not the hardest game in the world. And in fact, it's a game that if a really uh skilled team shows up and

[22:08] divides and spreads their strength across the entire game, you can crush the game in 15 to 20 minutes and it just

[22:15] crumples under the weight of a team that attacks it really forcefully. However,

[22:20] if you take a more casual approach and you try to savor the experience and you go through it without feeling like you

[22:26] need a rush, it can be a really delightful experience. But because of that, I was I was convinced that the

[22:33] type of player that's going to be voting and nominating Interpa would not find the amount of content in Wizards

[22:39] Treasure to be satisfying for them. Clearly, I'm wrong. Clearly, this game has struck a struck a chord with people and it's resonated with them. you know,

[22:45] even players that uh are really really experienced continue to come and play the game and they do really really well. It's not, you know, it's it's clearly

[22:52] not super challenging for them, but what it lacks in crushing difficulty, it it

[22:58] apparently makes up for in whimsy and charm and quality and fun. And so, uh, it it was shocking to me, but, um, also

[23:05] very validating that a game that, you know, isn't super long, doesn't have a whole lot of fancy tricks, but, you

[23:10] know, is just built well and built to be really fun and enjoyable. A game like that can

[23:16] exist alongside all these other games on the Tropic of Finalist list I've played that just like blow my mind and like the

[23:21] craziest, coolest things I've ever seen. Nice. All right, let's talk now maybe

[23:26] about Big Brain Labs. You mentioned that. Yeah, you mentioned that um you

[23:33] conceived, fabricated and programmed like everything yourself while managing a multidisiplinary team of artists,

[23:41] engineers and designers. How did they that project come together? Uh like Wizards Treasure. It started as

[23:49] a different project and then became Big Brand Labs. Uh at our location, we've got a couple

[23:56] other games. We used to have a game called Red Alert. We used to have a game or we currently have a game called Dr. Psycho and we had a game called Da Vinci

[24:02] Secret. After Wizards Treasure had opened, I wanted to go back through our

[24:07] older games and just refresh them a little bit. I wanted to add in some more exciting theatrical lighting effects. I

[24:14] wanted to replace some broken puzzles and I wanted to bring them up in quality to what Wizards Treasure was so that way

[24:20] we didn't have as much of a disparity in experiences. So, we went to Dr. psycho and we decided that we were going to re

[24:26] revise that game and we had started coming up with ideas of what that was going to be like and I came up with an

[24:33] idea that I don't want to say here because it is kind of a it's a little

[24:39] bit of a it's a very mild spoiler for Big Brain Labs but it's about the only spoiler there is so I'll just talk about

[24:44] it vaguely here but I came up with an idea for Dr. Psycho that I liked so much that when I took it to the owners, they

[24:51] also were really enthusiastic about this idea. And we asked ourselves, does this idea have to exist in a horror game? And

[24:59] even though that's where the idea came from, we realized maybe it doesn't. Maybe this idea

[25:04] would be better in a different type of experience. And that's when I started thinking about it. And for a very long

[25:11] time, I've been thinking about what type of a game would I make from thin air? Because like I said earlier, Wizards

[25:18] Treasure was decided from the beginning. We were doing a game about a wizard from the beginning. And that wasn't a

[25:24] decision that I was involved in at all. Whereas at this point, it was much more

[25:29] open-ended, which in some ways was great and in some ways was tough. Constraints are really nice for creativity. And so

[25:34] just the possibility of doing anything was a little overwhelming. However, I'd been thinking a lot about if I'm going

[25:39] to build an escape room that could be whatever I want, what would that look like? And I had this really vague, rough

[25:48] world in my head that was inspired by a lot of things I really love, like the

The Development of Big Brain Labs

[25:53] video game Portal, like Tomorrowland at Disneyland, um, a bunch a handful of

[25:59] Nintendo games. And it was this bright, colorful, retrofuturistic laboratory,

[26:05] not dissimilar to the game Evil Robots in Arizona at the company, The Nemesis

[26:10] Club. I played that game and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is this is very similar to uh what I was thinking." And it just so happens that this idea that

[26:16] we were really excited about happened to fit this science fiction world really really well. It actually like I feel

[26:23] like it belongs in that world more so than it would a horror game. So then we

[26:28] were like, "Okay, let's just do that. Let's let's do this new idea for a game instead. Let's not redo Dr. Psycho.

[26:33] Let's do that." And so Dr. Psycho was saved and we turned our sights to the game Red Alert and decided that it was

[26:40] time for that game to close and for us to rebuild a new experience in that space. And so we did we uh we did a

[26:46] little bit of planning. I would like to say that the learning experience of Wizards Treasure was really successful

[26:52] after that game. I started Big Brain Labs with much more of a plan than I had for Wizards Treasure. I actually planned

[26:59] out the game in advance for the most part. stuff. A lot of stuff changed, but we had we had the entire game sketched

[27:06] out from the beginning, what it would look like, what the rooms were like, what the general ideas we had for some

[27:12] of the content and the puzzles were. Um, and then we we went from there. I called up John again, who did major work on

[27:18] Wizards Treasure, and he was more than happy to help out again, and that was excellent. I think that Big Brain Labs

[27:24] scenically provides a really high quality experience in the same way that Wizards Treasure does because of John

[27:30] and the excellent work he did. And we sort of went off. We we went and we we kept building this game and we were able

[27:36] to build this game in about the exact same amount of time it took us to build Wizards Treasure, which was a year and a

[27:42] couple months. However, Big Brain Labs is over twice as much of a game as Wizards Treasure. just from a content

[27:48] standpoint, it literally has like 2.1 times as many things in it as Wizards

[27:54] Treasure does. And so it felt really good to uh uh I felt that I had improved

[28:00] and had learned a lot from building Wizards Treasure in a way that allowed me to build more efficiently. You talked about managing all of the other parts.

[28:08] So, I I definitely was taking the lead on this project in terms of coming up with the world um and communicating my

[28:15] vision of what the world was to the scenic artist, John. And then he was able to come up with scenic sketches from that. I came up with what all of

[28:22] the puzzles would be and I built all of those and I I stitched all those together and programmed them and play

[28:28] tested them. However, we had a lot of extra artists work on this game. One of them

[28:34] was Derek. I talked about Derek a little earlier. He was incredibly helpful. Honestly, Derek was just anytime he had

[28:40] free time and I had a job for him, he had the most strange jobs running wires. He grinded the concrete floors down. He

[28:46] painted stuff and was was a lot of help. I will say that if Wizards Treasure was

[28:51] learning what it feels like to build an entire project. Big Brain Labs was the learning experience of doing that but on

[28:59] a much larger and much more complicated scale. The skill that I think that I was working out the most on Big Brain Labs

[29:05] was speed with building and also delegation. I think that I need to

[29:11] continue working on my delegation skills. But I learned how difficult it can be to like it's much easier to show up and just like take care of all of the

[29:17] tasks that you need to get done that you have in your brain. being able to consider what other people could help

[29:22] you out with, create plans for them, create instructions, teach them how to do the things that you want them to do,

[29:29] and then trusting them to get it done like is a very very large skill that I underestimated going into this project

[29:35] that I got a lot of experience working out. But I think I I still there there there's more to learn there. We had a graphic artist named Will Comr and he

[29:43] did a lot of really really awesome work. He created the logo of the game that we just plastered everywhere. And it was

[29:50] just like, it seems like a small contribution, but it was a very large contribution. Did a bunch of other stuff. We had a carpenter, Jared

[29:56] Hamilton, that made us these like really awesome trick doors that like slide open with gravity. Matthew Mlan, he is a

[30:03] creative technologist. He's an also an escape room designer. He designed the game Case 93 in Los Angeles at 60 out

[30:09] Silver Lake. He also is uh a former employee of Hatch Escapes, popular company that I'm sure a lot of people

[30:14] know about. He did all of the final stitching together of the ladder, their big new game that they just uh released

[30:21] the last year that is really really complicated. There's like there's so much tech in that game. There's like

[30:27] four computers, like 8 billion Arduinos, and million miles of wire. And Matthew

[30:32] took all that and he was able to make it work. And so Matthew came onto this

[30:37] project and I had him take care of all the lighting design, all the uh uh

[30:42] technical design of the space like hanging the speakers. He also was a network engineer. He created this custom

[30:48] network that all the puzzles talk on. And at first it was really hard for me to relinquish a little bit of control

[30:53] and to trust people. But as soon as I got over it, that initial, you know,

[30:59] first couple days of of having other people work on stuff, it immediately became like the most my favorite thing

[31:05] ever to just show up and see other people working on the project and and and uh taking initiative and providing

[31:13] their own point of view in the experience and most importantly doing things that like I could never do. Like

[31:19] I certainly have a lot of skills. However, there there were many many blind spots and many many things that like I could fake it. I could like I

[31:26] could maybe do an okay job and like get it to work. But to have people that were really experts in specific things do

[31:33] their absolute best, I think created a final product that I'm just like so incredibly proud of. One more name I got

[31:39] to mention. Oh gosh, I feel like I'm probably forgetting so many people, but one other name I got to mention is Robert Burell, the composer of the game.

[31:46] Oh my gosh, music is such an important thing to me. I have such a strong point of view on what music can be and what I

[31:53] want it to be for the experiences I create. And Robert just absolutely home run it. Like I couldn't be more happy

[31:59] with the stuff he created. And I could never even like even if I spent a lot of

[32:05] time learning music and how to compose music, I don't think I could ever recreate what he did. He just brought

[32:11] such a unique, effective, and just absolutely rocking soundtrack to the

[32:16] game that elevates everything. Like the work that that's a really good thing that I I I think I just put together now

[32:23] is that all the work that everybody did really elevated the work of everyone else. And

[32:29] it's just so cool to walk into that space and be like, "Oh my gosh, look at that wall. That wall was stencled by John. And look at this. Look at this

[32:36] light. Matthew made this light. And like look at the floor tiles. Dare put all those floor tiles in and like and then

[32:41] the music swells and all the lights move and you see the the the logos all over the wall and I'm like wow this is just

[32:46] like such a symphony of like creativity by all these other people what it's like to manage them and work on them. Like I said like delegation is like a skill and

[32:53] you know I think that like you know you got to take a leap of faith and trust people and you have to like actually like plan it. Like delegation in project

[32:59] management is like such a substantial job. Matthew taught me a lot about like what actual project management looks

[33:05] like. We hired a couple extra hands that to come help run wires and like hang speakers. And Matthew created this

[33:11] really long list of every single job, how long each job was estimated to complete, who was assigned what job, who

[33:18] was assigned to teach what job, what jobs to do in what order. It was like it was like magic. What it was is it was a

[33:24] plan. And Wizard Stretcher was a game where I didn't have a plan. And this was a game where I I had some of a plan, but

[33:30] I didn't have that much of a plan. Then Matthew showed up with a real plan. And that uh that was that was really helpful to see.

[33:36] But yeah, it was um um honestly I I I put a lot of trust in in people and

[33:42] the people that I put trust in like showed up and delivered. And I I'm really really fortunate for that. Like I

[33:48] I think it would have gone a really different way had that not been the case and I would have had to face problems that I at least at this point haven't

[33:54] had to face. I really really fortunate and and and and proud and just so

[34:00] thankful of all the all the people that showed up and cared about my project and did their absolute best work.

[34:07] So, uh I feel like unfortunately there's not a ton of advice I could give on that because I got lucky. I got lucky. People did really well and like if they hadn't

[34:14] I don't know. I I I would have been sort of strung out but um that wasn't the case. The thing one thing I can say is

[34:21] that we definitely had way more people work on Big Brain Labs than Wizards Treasure. that is the way to do it. The

[34:26] next game I want to build, twice as many people I want to work on. I want to have come work on it. I don't know if that makes sense. That might not actually

[34:31] happen. But I I really genuinely enjoy collaborating with other people. And collaborating is just like such a joy and such a gift. And like seriously, the

[34:38] game that was made by the entire list of artists that worked on Big Brain Labs is way better than anything I could have

[34:44] ever made on my own. Nice. But yeah, that was a very long long-winded answer to that question there. Uh, apologize if I kind of got

[34:50] off the rails there, but I I just No, I just kept remembering other contributions and and other people and

[34:56] there there's so much more that I didn't even talk about. There's very very extensive credits at the end of Big

[35:01] Brain Labs with visual aids to show you all of the work that people contributed on the project. And so, if you come play

[35:07] the game, you won't be relying on my memory to tell the story for you. Everybody is properly celebrated for

[35:13] their contributions at the end of the game itself. For somebody who is just getting into game design, when you're

[35:20] designing a new game, do you start with the story, the mechanics, single moment

[35:25] that you want people to to feel or what's your philosophy on it? Like how

[35:32] properly to design a game? Yeah, that's a really great question. I don't know if there is a like proper way

[35:37] of doing it. And to be honest, like I've I have two examples where I have from a

[35:42] large scale built two games. And two isn't a whole lot of data to have like

[35:48] found the golden the the golden formula of of what goes into making a good game,

[35:53] but I'm I'm definitely happy to share what has worked with me in the past and when I think about making games in the

[35:59] future, what I sort of where I sort of start. So, I I think that all the things

[36:06] you mentioned, gameplay, story, world, one sort of specific idea that you build off of, I think all of those are totally

[36:12] valid. Wizards Treasure um uh was a game where um I uh definitely

[36:21] started with the mechanics of the game first. Um in fact, we didn't even lock in the story until we started play

[36:27] testing. The way that I had built the game was like a Nintendo game where the story is kind of secondary. It's in

[36:34] support of the game. You know, you're going to save a princess from the castle. The important thing is the

[36:39] gameplay. And so, I put a lot of thought into the mechanics and how the game played because I wanted it to be really

[36:45] fun. And if it was really fun, I was like, we can tell the players whatever. We can have the wizard say whatever. The storyline can be a multitude of

[36:51] different things and it won't significantly affect the it won't change that much of the experience.

[36:58] it. That's also just because it's really hard to I I I'm intimidated by telling impactful, meaningful, real, meaty

[37:05] stories in escape rooms. And so, you know, it's easy for me to, at least right now, make the story a little

[37:11] simpler to make it easier to come up with other things. And so, that way it's not something that's, you know, uh,

[37:16] holding me back. So, Wizard Treasure, that's what we did. Uh, I I focused mainly on the mechanics first and then

[37:22] story was pretty secondary. Big Brain Labs was similar. However, I mentioned earlier this vague detail that I didn't

[37:27] go into any any specifics about, which come play Big Brain Labs, you'll know what I'm talking about. This one thing

[37:33] that we built the entire game around, and it's specifically the ending of the game. This specific thing was the ending

[37:40] of the game. And it was narrative, believe it or not, which I surprised myself. I was like, whoa, normally I

[37:46] wouldn't think to hold a narrative story beat this sacred, but it was it was sort of the cornerstone that we built the

[37:52] rest of the game off of. So, I've had success with a lot of different things. The way that I think about it is like my

[37:58] goal is to just find a way in. I just have to figure out a way for me to just get obsessed about it and to get fixated

[38:05] on the project that I'm working on. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a way in to me I'm looking for a way

[38:11] in so that way I can get excited about it. And then when I'm excited about it,

[38:18] it just kind of runs away and just kind of happens. I just am, you know, it's just this weird place where I I black

[38:23] out and I I I the sawdust gets everywhere and there's there's there's wire wires all over the ground and I

[38:28] I've made something. But like finding that way in is the tricky part. And sometimes often it's it's not the same

[38:34] thing every time. Sometimes I'll come up with an idea. What would it be like if I built a puzzle that I'm trying to

[38:39] convince players that they're catching lightning? That was one of the things in Wizards Treasure where we have this thing called the lightning catcher. And

[38:46] I started from this sort of narrative base of what is what would it look like if I if I had the players catching

[38:52] lightning or stopping time. And that was a really effective tool for me to just sort of come up with a very general idea

[38:59] and then brainstorm what that could look like. In Big Brain Labs, um I would do the same thing, but I would do almost

Philosophy of Game Design

[39:04] the exact opposite. How can I make a game with levers? I have no idea what it would be and what

[39:10] the context in the story would be, but I want to make these big funny levers and I want them to be absolutely giant and

[39:17] we're going to hang them on the wall and there's going to be four of them and we're going to we're going to figure out how we can turn this into a game. And

[39:22] that was a really effective way in. And so it's it's never the same. It's

[39:28] never the same. But one thing that um is the same that is consistent throughout

[39:33] is that I have a I give myself a structure to sort of fall back on. There's a common saying amongst escape

[39:40] room creators that I've heard. At this point, I'm not even certain the source because it's just been told to me over and over again. But the saying is is

[39:46] that structure is content. And the first time that was told to me really

[39:51] resonated with me. I immediately was like, what does that mean? And then I thought about it and I was like, oh

[39:57] yeah, the structure of your thing, that's what the content is. How is it

[40:02] put together? And as somebody who grew up building a lot of Legos, I was like, "Oh, yeah. This is just like how it's

[40:08] put together." So, I need to figure out how this is going to be put together. And for both Big Brain Labs and Wizards

[40:14] Treasure, I created a game structure that allowed me to be really flexible in how I created things. Where the

[40:20] structure is, let's say, hey, you've got six games. There are six individual games that are all independent of one

Game Mechanics vs. Storytelling

[40:27] another. Every time you solve a game, you get a key. And if you get six keys, you beat the game. There's the structure. That's a simple example. The

[40:33] structures of those games are slightly more complicated, but honestly by not that much more. In Big Brain Labs, the

[40:39] structure is there is an introduction. There is a tutorial that teaches you the gameplay loop of the game. There is 10

[40:46] experiments that you complete in order. And then upon completing the 10 experience experiments, there's a final

[40:52] encounter and then an epilog. And so having that structure allows me to break this really large project an entire game

[41:00] is a lot to think about. However, I can focus in on, okay, what's experiment number two? What is this the the second

[41:06] game going to be in this in this larger game? And just focusing on that one

[41:12] specific thing um is a much easier job than trying to accommodate for

[41:18] everything else. And then when I'm focusing on that one specific thing, I can go back to what I was talking about. What's my way in? What am I going to Am

[41:25] I going to have them catch lightning? Am I going to have them pull levers? I don't know. But I'm just finding a way in. When I figure that out, I can execute that one individual puzzle. And

[41:32] then when it's done, it's done. I can move on to the next. And what's great about that is if I know where the puzzle begins and I know where it ends, let's

[41:39] say we get nine months into the build and I haven't built puzzle number nine yet. If I know that puzzle number nine

[41:44] is going to begin with a and it's going to end with getting a key, then I can

[41:50] change what my idea was for that puzzle n months later in the build because it's

[41:55] sort of modular. it's not going to have this domino effect that affects a bunch of other things. And so between just

[42:02] looking for a way in by whatever anything that works, I'm game for. Maybe

[42:07] it's playing other games, maybe it's watching movies, maybe it's listening to music. Music is so inspirational to me.

[42:14] But if there's any way that I can visualize something that gets me hooked, that gets me to obsess and fixate on it,

[42:20] that's my way in. And creating a structure for the entire game that allows me to have flexibility within

[42:27] that is something that enables me to break down each of those individual

[42:33] tasks into much smaller segments that's easier to manage. So that's sort of how I go about it is I create a whole

[42:38] structure of the game and then I just go piece by piece looking for a way in. And it's it's always different. And maybe at some point in the future I'll have a

[42:44] more strong opinion about the the correct way of doing it. But for now, like honestly, like sometimes my way in

[42:50] is is a really cool song and sometimes my way in is like driving on my way to work and sometimes my way is is like

[42:56] cooking a meal and and it's weird. Creativity is strange and I don't understand it, but I show up. If I show

[43:03] up and I'm open to the ideas coming, then the door is open and and they might come, but if I never show up, they'll

[43:08] never come. Um, but yeah, that's sort of how I go about doing that. Kind of a weird, archaic, mysterious thing.

[43:14] Creativity is weird. Let me ask you this. What's your philosophy on a player

[43:19] emotion? How do you want people to feel walking out of one of your rooms?

[43:25] Uh oh, that's a great question. I honestly, you know, I'd say the thing that's the

[43:31] most important to me is is fun. I think that there are a lot of really

[43:38] valuable emotions that players could be feeling. I've in fact played a lot of other escape rooms that have made me

[43:45] feel a multitude of emotions. Um, and that feels like that's very intimidating. That feels like that's

[43:50] very difficult to me. It's really hard to pull off a really effective emotional experience. And the ones that I've played that have done it, I'm just like

[43:56] aruck by them. I think it's just like the coolest, most magical thing ever. Um, and maybe one day I will attempt

[44:01] something like that and I will uh see how that goes. But for now, my goal is

[44:07] fun. I want players to just be charmed. I want them to feel like they just were

[44:12] completely absent from their normal lives and were completely captivated by just being really playful, you know?

[44:19] Like part of me feels like what I'm trying to get at with the games that I make is that I'm just making toys for

[44:26] adults. I love toys. I'm I'm an adult. I still love toys. As a kid, I really really love toys. Like anytime we went

[44:32] to the store, I'm walking through that toy aisle. anytime we got like the Black Friday magazines, I didn't care about

[44:38] anything but the toy magazines. And I just really like toys. I just think it's very very fun to play with things. And I

[44:45] I I think that as adults, we sort of forget about that. We forget about what

[44:50] culturally it means to play. And kids are really really good at it. And escape rooms are a really great catalyst to

[44:57] getting you back to that state of this is a toy and I've suspended my disbelief and I'm engaging with other people and

[45:04] I'm creating memories and I'm just having fun and I'm in this this this state of play and that that that's

[45:10] that's what I'm going for at least right now. I just want to make people feel playful and feel like they're playing with a bunch of toys and that they're

[45:16] kids again even though they they're they're adults. Um, but maybe one day I

[45:21] will tackle something that's maybe a little bit more mature and maybe not as happy or maybe maybe maybe happy just in

[45:28] a different way. But yeah, for now play. All right. How do you make your rooms

[45:34] feel alive? What is the secret sauce to it? Yeah, the secret sauce is details. I

[45:41] think that it's important for in order for a world to feel authentic and lived

[45:46] in, it has to have details that reflect that. Anywhere I can add in little

[45:51] details that validate and support the world that I'm working on building, the better. And I think that that's what

[45:57] makes a world feel alive. A world that references itself, a world that references the players and their

[46:04] actions, a world that references past events that the players weren't there for, and a world that is open to future

[46:10] events that haven't happened yet. It's much more different than just creating a place, a scene, a set that looks nice.

[46:17] That's also very important and part of it, but not just looking nice, but

[46:23] feeling real and lived in. For example, there are many details that we will

[46:30] build into the games that aren't part of the game at all. That's purely just part of the world building. And so, for

[46:36] example, in the game Wizards Treasure, at the very very beginning of the game, there's there's this big tree of gnomes,

[46:42] and you've got to put one of the gnomes through a car wash. If you haven't played the game, you're

[46:48] probably like thinking, "What am I talking about?" Uh, just come play the game. Um, yeah, there's a there's a gnome car wash. It's true. It's real.

[46:54] You got to see it to believe it. Come play Wizard's Treasure. And so you got to put this gnome through the gnome car wash. Uh the whole reason is is because

[47:02] the ladder's broken. And so mechanically as a player, what you're doing is you're picking up this little like garden gnome

[47:07] prop and you're putting it down a chute. That's what you're doing. That's what the gameplay is. However, we built out

[47:12] this whole thing that looks like a car wash. It's got little scrubbers on it. It's got it's a fountain. It's got water. It lights up and like, you know,

[47:19] looks like it gets really warm. And the ladder's broken. there's a ladder leading up to it that's

[47:25] broken and like that we could we don't need to have the ladder there but the fact that you know a a simpler choice

[47:32] could be hey can you drop me in the water slide sure that would work however

[47:40] changing it building a little bit more to the evil wizard broke the ladder to my

[47:46] water slide and now I can't get up there can you use your long arms and lift me up there because I need to take a bath

[47:52] because I smell smell. It's the same thing from a game design standpoint. Like structurally, you're doing the exact same action and it has the same

[47:58] result and it's the same like thing to figure out, but there's these little details between what the gnome is

[48:03] actually saying to you. The fact that when the gnome says the ladder is broken, you look over at the ladder. It is broken. That's a real broken ladder

The Importance of Player Emotion

[48:09] there. And then when you put him in the thing, it instead of just opening up a lock, it plays this whole animation of

[48:15] of him getting washed as if he's going through this car wash. And I think that's an example of of spicing up an

[48:22] idea with details to make it feel more real and lived in. It's also just like really charming. The car wash was was

[48:28] was uh John and I, the scenic artist, John Zel, and we're talking about it and

[48:33] I really wanted to put a water slide in the game cuz I thought that that would just be fun. I was like, "Water slides are cool. Let's put in a water slide for

[48:38] the gnomes." And he was like, "What if it was a water slide that like cleaned them?" And I was like, "Like a car wash?" And he was like, "Yeah." And then

[48:44] we built a gnome car wash. And so, you know, weird ideas come from strange places. But yeah, that's uh that's

[48:50] that's how I go about uh trying to make the world feel alive. But some of it is also testing. You know, having people

[48:56] run through the game and seeing how they're responding to things and seeing the details that they pick up on. Sometimes we'll put in a lot of effort

[49:02] into a little detail that nobody notices. There's a couple of those in Big Brain Labs that I'm like, "Oh man, if only people would notice this really

[49:08] small detail that we spent two days making." And then other times we realize like, hey, there is a detail that is

[49:14] missing here that we need to add in order to make this more clear. And so that's a part of it as well. But, you

[49:19] know, we really try to make sure that that those little details we're putting as much effort into as the large things

[49:25] that light up and make sounds and there's buttons and whatnot. Um, we try to we try to give equal treatment to all the little stuff. Um, yeah, the little

[49:31] details make it feel lived in. Um, as someone who builds both physically

[49:37] and digitally, what's one underrated tool or material every designer should

[49:43] know about? Like, do you have something which you learn? Like, this is great. Everyone needs to use it. Yeah. Um,

[49:52] gosh, I probably could have so many different answers to this question, but I'm going to go ahead. I don't know if

[49:57] this is like widely underrated and my assumption is it might not be but it wasn't something that was a part of my

[50:03] workflow and then when I added it to my workflow it changed everything. The the the quality of stuff that I was able to

[50:10] make just orders of magnitude higher and that is a CNC machine. There's a large

[50:17] variety of different types of CNC machines you can get both in size and price. I have a smaller tabletop one

[50:25] that I got from a company called Shaoco. They're a small business in San Diego. They make these pretty awesome. They're

[50:32] not that large and they're not that expensive machines. And if you don't

Creating Lively Escape Room Environments

[50:38] know what a CNC is, it's it's like a 3D printer, but instead of adding material, squirting out plastic that it heats up,

[50:44] it has a cutting bit on it and it cuts away. It's it's it's not additive manufacturing, it's subtractive

[50:50] manufacturing. And what is just crazy to me is I can draw a shape on a computer.

[50:55] I can create some design in Photoshop, convert it to a vector, and then cut that shape out in wood. And it's like

[51:02] perfect. Like the circles are perfect. The measurements are exact. And being able to create little Lego pieces on a

[51:09] computer and then cut them out is just crazy. That is really awesome. Using a

[51:15] CNC machine for its assumed purpose of just cutting wood is really useful.

[51:21] However, there's been a few uses of it that have just absolutely blown my mind.

[51:26] One is using it as an engraver. You can change the bit out to a very sharp

[51:32] little diamond that scratches things like brass and acrylic. And you can

[51:38] program it to instead of like spinning and cutting to just like scratch into surfaces. Boom. I put a piece of acrylic

[51:43] down there. Now I can engrave onto the top of acrylic and then you sidelight it and it looks beautiful. Looks like those

[51:49] big maps like in Star Wars where it's semi-transparent but then like the light catches all of the frosted details. So

[51:55] cool doing that with the CNC machine. Another thing is I create I made for Big

[52:02] Brain Labs. We had to make a bunch of curved monitors like old retroooking TVs. And this is a problem that I I know

[52:09] a lot of other creators have had cuz I've talked to them. How do you create an old retroooking CRT style monitor

[52:15] without just going and buying an old CRT style monitor? Can you make Can you fake that screen and use like an HD LCD

[52:23] screen monitor that you get off Amazon or at Best Buy for like 100 bucks? Can you do it? And I couldn't find a whole

[52:29] lot of information of people that had successfully done it. So, I was like, I'll try to figure this out on my own. I'm going to create a vacuum forming

[52:35] machine. Um, which if you don't know what that is, um, they're typically not something you can buy. They sometimes

[52:40] make commercial ones, but they're really, really expensive. If you're interested in it, it's not that difficult and not that expensive for you

[52:47] to just make one yourself for like 200 bucks and like an afternoon. There's many, many videos on YouTube that you

[52:53] can look up that'll show you how to do it. That's what I did. I found a video and I made one. What it is is it's two

[52:58] parts. One part is a heater that heats up a piece of plastic. And I went and I

[53:04] bought like an outdoor infrared heater from Lowe's and I use that to heat up my plastic. And the other part is the

[53:11] vacuum forming table, which looks like it's an air hockey table. It's a it's a piece of wood with a bunch of holes in

[53:16] it and air flows through it, but instead of blowing air out, it sucks the air down. So it's an air hockey table you

[53:22] hook up a vacuum to. And so what you do is you heat up your plastic so that way

[53:27] it gets soft. It's not totally melted, but it's soft. And then you create a

[53:32] basically a blank that is this this 3D object that you can put on your vacuum

[53:38] forming table. And then when you take your soft heated up plastic and you put it over that and you turn it on, it sucks out all the air and it pulls the

[53:45] plastic down and creates this really really accurate mold of that shape that

[53:51] you had put on there. And then the plastic cools and now you've cast this shape. So what I did is I went to my CNC

[53:58] machine and um CNC's are able to do some degree of three-dimensional carving. It's not just totally two-dimensional

[54:04] like for depending on the machine you have like you know 3 to 4 in depth you can carve 3D things. I had it carve out

[54:11] this big curved rounded uh uh 16 by9

[54:19] monitor shape and I heated up a piece of acrylic and I vacuum formed it around that and like boom now I've got this

[54:26] perfectly rounded domed screen. This acrylic piece I can put over my monitor and then hey I've already cut out this

[54:33] shape. Why don't I go back to my CNC and then I cut out a frame that perfectly matches at that that profile that I had

[54:40] just cut out? And then I did that and then it's like, okay, I'm using my CNC to like make these molds for the vacuum

[54:46] forming. I'm using the CNC to like cut out these frames. I'm using them to like etch plastic. It's crazy. I feel like I

[54:51] don't even know all of the ways that I can use a CNC machine. I keep figuring out new ways to utilize it to make cool stuff, but that's got to be at least a

[54:58] thing recently that has like, you know, like there's been a couple small individual tools that I've added in my

[55:04] workflow, like a pin nailer, among many other things that like, wow, this is a nice tool to have that I didn't know

[55:09] existed before. But like, oh my gosh, the CNC machine, I've been able to make the coolest stuff that I just can't even believe that I made because of that. And

Underrated Tools for Designers

[55:15] it does so much. It does so many different things. So, if you don't have one of those on your radar, I'd say it's just as, if not more useful for escape

[55:23] rooms than 3D printing is, which is crazy. I'm a huge 3D printing evangelist. I love 3D printers. Half of

[55:29] my games are 3D printed. And I still think that the CNC machine, if I had to pick one, I'd pick the CNC machine over

[55:36] a 3D printer. It's just it's just especially for fabricating and building sets and building props and stuff. Like,

[55:42] it's so it's so cool. And the best part is it works for you. you you put the

[55:47] wood in and you hit go and it cuts out the wood for you. You don't have to cut it out. You can watch it. You can go do

[55:52] something else in the same building. You don't want to leave it unattended, but you can go do something else. And that's just crazy to me. They're awesome.

[55:58] They're not They're not I I expected it to be inaccessible. I spent about $2,500 on the one that I have, and it came with

[56:07] about a month of free classes that let me learn how to use the machine. And also, this is I'm I'm not they're not

[56:13] paying me anything. I just think they're a cool company. Sha Poco specifically has a policy where if in the first month

[56:18] of owning your CNC you destroy it or you break it, they'll replace replace everything for free

[56:25] just so that way you don't feel you don't feel scared to accidentally ruin your big fancy machine you just bought.

[56:31] They want you to dive in. They want you to get using it and they want you to break it. And I did. I used I broke it. I turned it on and I had this this

[56:38] spinning cutter and it just cut a hole right through the middle of it and I was like, "Oh gosh." But, you know, that's

[56:43] fine. learning curve hasn't happened since. Made some really cool stuff with it. So CNC's has got to be my number one right now.

[56:49] Nice. Okay. Um let me shift our attention to LA [clears throat] market.

[56:56] Okay. Because it honestly it became like legendary. So my question to you, what

[57:02] makes it so creatively fertile compared to other markets?

[57:07] Gosh, I honestly don't have a ton of perspective on the like business side of what makes LA really exciting and really

[57:14] successful for escape rooms. If I had to wager a guess, I'd say it's because LA attracts a lot of creative people with

[57:21] big dreams and aspirations. I'm one of them. I moved to LA to pursue a career in acting cuz I went to theater school

[57:27] and that's what I wanted to do and I had really big dreams and ambitions and you know LA is one of the cities in America

[57:34] that you move to if that's what you want to do. and I ended up stumbling into a completely different dream job that I

[57:39] had no idea existed in the first place. And I'm absolutely loving it. But that's at least what brought me here. And I

[57:44] know that the creators that I know of that have made all of my favorite games in Los Angeles, like it's similar. Like

[57:50] LA is a city that has a lot of theme parks. It gets a lot of tourists. It has a very large market for themed

[57:55] entertainment in general. And so it makes complete sense to me why LA has such a strong diverse

[58:04] escape room market. But yeah, who knows that who knows more beyond that? I certainly don't.

[58:11] What other local creators or rooms do you admire right now? The ones that push

[58:16] you to raise your own bar. Gosh, I mean like where do I begin? I I I really try to go out and play um as

[58:24] many games as I possibly can. There's just there's just so many of them. Um, you know, just off the top of my head,

[58:31] the last few games I've played in LA that are like really sticking out to me, Ghost of Mintryville, Inc. and Ashes is

[58:37] a really great game. Flynn's Arcade is really, really excellent as well. It's not in LA exactly, but out in the

[58:44] desert, you drive a few hours out into Joshua Tree, you got Wild Heart Ranch. Oh my gosh, Wild Heart Ranch is

[58:50] incredible. I'm sure it's familiar to a lot of people that are listening to this, but if you don't know what that is, you should go look it up. It's

[58:56] really cool and mysterious and there's nothing else like it. It's like an Airbnb escape room in the desert. But oh

[59:02] my gosh, when I played that when I I swear it broke my brain. I I I was so

[59:08] inspired by what's possible when you don't have a timer, when you don't when you not being supervised, when you have

[59:14] all of this space. That's a major inspiration to me. Of course, all the stuff at like Hatch is just like really excellent. a few of the games I played

[59:20] there just like like when I played the nest the first time that was that was just like so instrumental in Wizards

[59:26] Treasure because I played the Nest and I was like oh you can break all the rules you don't have to do you can do whatever

[59:32] and so when I built Wizards Treasure that gave me a lot of agency to break rules and like make it so that way there's not a timer and make it so that

[59:38] way the puzzles are actually more like mini gamess and they have three rounds and they get harder and you do them over and over again. So like Labra rat that

[59:43] game is very very just hilarious and hysterical. I've played it a few times now and every time I play it I learn something new about it. I haven't played

[59:48] it yet, but I'm just absolutely dying to go play Apple Seed Avenue. That's a game that's a Sesame Street CSI, and it just

[59:56] sounds absolutely amazing. And uh can't wait to play that. Hope End as well.

[1:00:02] That that game is just awesome. I really love the use of actors. Weeping Witch is another great actor game. Gosh, if I

[1:00:07] don't stop talking, I'll just keep listing out games that I I really really love. But like genuinely like the entire community is just like so inspiring to

[1:00:14] me and I I am happy that Big Brain Labs is is up and running because that gives me a lot more time to go out and play

[1:00:20] all the games that have come out recently that I haven't played yet. There's even more on the list that I could keep mentioning for time. I'll

[1:00:25] stop myself there because the short answer is like literally everything. Mhm.

[1:00:31] Most of the market is really really good games that uh inspire me and that are made by people that were passionate

[1:00:36] about it and excited to share the thing that they created. And when I go to play their games, I can see that they were

[1:00:43] made by people and I can see the people behind all of the decisions that were made. And

[1:00:49] yeah, I'm lucky lucky to live in a market like LA that just has such such a strong assortment of games. There's also

[1:00:56] games obviously all over the world that I'm very inspired by. But I'm really going to just stop myself because um

[1:01:02] I'll immediately start talking about The Immersive Machine and I'll talk about all the games that I played in the Netherlands. And look, I'm doing it.

[1:01:08] Okay, I'm going to stop now. What kind of themes or genres do you hope to explore next?

[1:01:14] I would love to do something that's a little spooky, not fully scary, but uh both Big Brain Labs and Wizards Treasure

[1:01:20] are like very fun and very whimsical and they're very bright and there's nothing

[1:01:25] about them that is unnerving or threatening in any way at all. They're

[1:01:30] like so fun. Like people ask and they're like, "Is the game scary? I want to play a game that's not scary." Big Brain Labs

[1:01:37] and Wizards Treasure are probably about the most opposite of scary you can possibly get. That being said, I'd love to do something that has the same level

[1:01:44] of whimsicality, has the same point of view of Big Brain Labs and Wizards Treasure, but instead of being a game

[1:01:50] that's totally bright and cheerful and colorful, it has some unsettling parts.

[1:01:56] It has some weird creepy nature to it. I'd love to build something that feels a little alien and feels a little urban

[1:02:03] legendy and has more of a mystery to it and isn't quite so welcoming and quite

[1:02:10] like a hug when you go to play it. Um, so that's what I'm most interested in now. But also, like I said earlier, that

[1:02:17] I I would be definitely interested in tackling the challenge of making a game that tells a really strong story.

[1:02:25] If you had unlimited budget and no logistical issues, what would be the

[1:02:31] dream experience to design? Perfect. I'm so ready for this. So, if you happen to have unlimited money and no logistical challenges, hit me up and

[1:02:37] I'm I'm ready to go on this project. So, it's one of two things. I'd love to build a real life full scale Zelda

[1:02:43] dungeon, like classic Zelda dungeon where it's, you know, like 15 to 30 rooms. It's full of things you got to

[1:02:50] fight and halfway through there's a power up that lets you traverse the other half that you weren't able to get

The Creative Landscape of LA

[1:02:56] to because you need the hook shot. It would be so cool to create this just like labyrinth, this just absolutely

[1:03:01] massive sprawling gauntlet, this castle of corridors with

[1:03:08] maps and powerups. Like that'd be so cool. I'd also love very similar vein to that. I'd love to build something that

[1:03:13] feels like a Metroid game where it's just this thing that you just get lost in and like you you'll go and you'll get

[1:03:21] this power up that unlocks a door some place really really really far away. I think it'd be really cool to just

[1:03:26] explore a gigantic space. In that same vein, it'd be cool to like have a whole island and like build a game on an entire island. Um,

[1:03:34] but yeah, you describing you describing these things right now and for some reason I'm immediately thinking about Mr.

[1:03:42] Oh my god. Yeah, Mr. Beast probably could. I think if there's one person in the world that could get away with like building an entire castle escape room on

[1:03:48] an island, it would be Mr. Beast. Say, Mr. Beast, if you're you want you want me to make you a giant escape room, castle, Zelda dungeon, Metroid Vania on

[1:03:55] an island and you have unlimited budget and no logistical challenges, I'm your guy. I could do it. And now, Mr. Beast,

[1:04:03] if you're listening or watching and you do want to do it, I want to get my commission for this introduction.

[1:04:11] Yes, that that would also have to be a part of the deal. That's non-negotiable. Oh man, that's so fun. So now, finally,

[1:04:18] for anyone listening who dreams of becoming a designer, Yeah. maybe someone currently working as an

[1:04:24] actor or game master, what's the first step they should take to start building

[1:04:29] their own worlds? That's a great question. So, the first thing I'm going to say is this is advice

[1:04:34] that I got from my theater teacher in college. She said, "Be careful of advice from people that are successful because

[1:04:41] they might not have had to deal with all the same challenges that you had to deal with." And so, just recognizing that I

[1:04:47] I'm a person that found success relatively early on because of many reasons. because I I was in the right

[1:04:53] place at the right time because I had a lot of skills and I was really ambitious

[1:04:59] in pursuing those skills and evolving them. And I I can't deny that I also just got incredibly lucky that when it

[1:05:06] came time to uh the opportunity to build Wizards Treasure, it literally came down to one single text message and uh uh a

[1:05:14] couple chance encounters that I ended up being the one that ended up building that game. And you know, it's likely

[1:05:20] that if that didn't happen, I probably would have caught some other opportunity later on. Um, but I think that's

[1:05:25] important to recognize that like it's tough out here and a job in the creative field is is is is working against you.

[1:05:32] Honestly, just like every career is is difficult and it can be hard to sort of like find your way in. And so if you're

[1:05:38] finding a lot of opposition and you know, you're really trying and it's just not working, you know, that that's just

[1:05:44] that's just part of it. And um you know I guess you have to determine for yourself what your threshold is, what

[1:05:50] your tolerance is when it comes to how much of that you can bear versus how much you value other things in life like

[1:05:57] stability and whatnot. Um and that being said, what I would say is that if if

[1:06:02] you're interested in a career in building escape rooms and working on these things, I think the most important

[1:06:08] thing you can do is like just start doing it, you know, just start learning things. I think that like obviously like

[1:06:15] you need to get paid to like live. However, aside from getting paid, you don't have to wait for somebody to give

[1:06:21] you permission to build something and you don't have to spend a lot of money to build something either. You know, I talked to so many people that are, you

[1:06:28] know, building things in their garage or for their friend's birthday party out of cardboard and paper. And if you want to

[1:06:35] make escape rooms, you can start doing that and you don't need to wait for somebody to give you a job to do that. I

[1:06:41] also think that it's really important to get involved. I think right now the escape room community is an incredibly

[1:06:47] welcoming community, especially compared to other artistic disciplines. It's also a very accessible community. It's not

[1:06:54] this big bloated whale of, you know, like hundreds of thousands of people all competing for the same jobs. um like it

[1:07:00] certainly shares a lot of similarities with other artistic industries, but because it's in its infancy and there

[1:07:06] there isn't as much competition as some other creative jobs like being an actor or a director or a movie maker or

[1:07:12] whatnot, um you know, the odds of you getting lucky and being in the right place at the right time and getting a good opportunity, I think, are higher

[1:07:19] than maybe some others. But I I guess I'm not totally qualified to say that with with absolute certainty. That's

[1:07:24] just my feeling. Um but if you start making things, that's that's a great way to help. I also think that it's really

[1:07:30] important to share your passion. If you're the type of person that wants to make stuff and you're going to go out of your way to do it, you're likely

[1:07:36] somebody that is really passionate about that. And I found that in personal experience that is really valuable. It's

[1:07:42] really easy to not care about anything ever. But when you do, people listen.

[1:07:47] And they might not all listen, but I think being passionate is contagious and that's a really good thing. And if you

Exploring New Themes and Genres

[1:07:53] are really passionate, like don't be afraid to share that. Don't be afraid to take up space and share your passion with other people because I think that

[1:07:59] that will be noticed. And I I I think that that is that is just as important,

[1:08:04] if not more important, than like how good are you at painting and how good are you at screwing pieces of wood

[1:08:10] together or programming? Like those skills are important, but like if you're really passionate and determined, like

[1:08:15] you can figure that stuff out. Like that stuff is you can learn it. I don't know how I would learn how I would teach

[1:08:21] somebody to be passionate if they weren't already. But yeah. Yeah. all those things and be gentle to yourself. Like it's going to be rough and people

[1:08:27] are going to say no to you and especially with creative things like it's really personal and it's hard to

[1:08:32] put yourself out there. Like even though I've got these games that like do really well and people seem to really love them and I'm like so overjoyed by that.

[1:08:39] Sometimes people don't. Sometimes people play them and they're grumpy about it and it wasn't for them and like that

[1:08:44] hurts. And even I I am constantly reminding myself that I need to be kind

[1:08:49] to myself. I need to be gentle with myself and that like none of it's personal and even though it feels personal to me because I'm putting

[1:08:55] myself out there, I'm putting my ideas out there, I'm putting my creativity out there, that it's it's not personal and

[1:09:00] it's okay and your ideas are awesome and sacred and if somebody doesn't think they are, that's okay. And maybe maybe somebody else maybe somebody else will

[1:09:08] think that they're awesome and amazing. Um, but just keep at it. Go for it. Keep working on your skills. Keep making things. Keep sharing the things you make

[1:09:14] with other people that are passionate. And get involved in the community. You know, go to escape room meetups if you've got them. get into escape room

[1:09:20] discords, listen to the escape room podcasts like you're doing right now and all sorts of other stuff. I think that,

[1:09:27] you know, if you get involved and you're passionate and you make good stuff, then at least in my experience, there's a

[1:09:33] shortage of of people that are able to make cool things and that are passionate about it. I get people ask me all the

[1:09:39] time for referrals of prop makers and artisans and stuff, and I oftentimes

[1:09:44] don't have a person to immediately recommend. And so to me that feels like there's a lot of room to fill. And so um

[1:09:51] yeah, get out of hiding, make some stuff, make it known, join us in the escape room world and make cool things.

[1:10:00] Let's do it. What an incredible conversation. Grant Lukey is part of a new wave of escape

[1:10:07] room designers who is blending theater, technology, fabrication, and emotion to

[1:10:13] create deeply immersive experiences. His work at 60 Out and Beyond shows what's

[1:10:18] possible when storytelling and engineering collide. If you haven't played Wizards, Treasure or Big Brain

[1:10:25] Labs, put them on your list. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with another attraction owner or creative.

[1:10:32] And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, and Apple

[1:10:38] Podcasts. And if you want to be featured on the show, visit attractionsinsights.com.

[1:10:43] And thanks for listening. I'll see you in the next