289: Project Avatar & Escape Rooms

This week The Short Game played an online escape room experience called Project Avatar, in which we commanded an “avatar”, a real live human person in a warehouse in Ukraine, through a series of puzzle challenges. It was a supremely weird and wildly entertaining experience. We also discuss escape rooms generally, including online and at-home escape room experiences. Here are Laura’s links and resources for this episode: Main review — Project Avatar: Stalker https://projectavatar.fun/ Games Mentioned Trapped Takeout: https://www.trappedpuzzlerooms.com/trapped-takeout/ The Emerald Flame (PostCurious): https://postcurious.myshopify.com/ Colby’s Curious Cookoff https://curiouscookoff.com/ SCRAP’s Escape From the Science Lab of Scifting Rules (the Baba Is You-y one) https://roomescapeartist.com/2021/04/02/scrap-escape-science-lab-shifting-rules-hivemind-review/ Bluefish Games: https://www.teambluefish.com/ Box One: https://store.theory11.com/products/boxone Guides to finding good at home games My favorite reviewers, cause they do hiveminds where multiple people review the same room (and they ran the conference I liked) https://roomescapeartist.com/ 2020 Online Escape Room Awards https://terpeca.com/2020/#onlinerooms An index for at home game reviews: https://escapethereview.co.uk/location/play-at-home/ A flowchart https://www.escapethereview.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PlayAtHomeFlowchart.pdf Which Room in a Box should I buy? https://escapethereview.co.uk/which-room-in-a-box-should-i-buy/ Meta list of lists of at-home games https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1anO0NQhwwOFZLmydCuoY4cd4R6x52KnxOAfAxZCGt1c/edit Puzzle Hunt Calendar http://puzzlehuntcalendar.com/ Want to know more about Escape Rooms? RECON Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvtiar8OygeaCKLog9ff_TBmJKuW-b8ZZ Escape Room Design Links: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lwSTxIews8azOqzHEy0vyoSrX7orx55pRImXWuBVkjU/edit The Short Game is supported directly by our listeners on Patreon! Supporters at any level get access to our Discord, where we discuss games, plan episodes, and talk about what we are playing in real time. You can also support us by writing a review on Apple Podcasts! You can follow our show on Twitter at @_shortgame Your hosts this week were: Raygan Kelly – @raygankShane Kelly – @8bitShaneNate Heininger – @natestlLaura Nash – @laurajnash (00:00) - Introduction (04:45) - Escape Rooms Online And Off (20:26) - Project Avatar (58:09) - Other Games And Resources (01:18:15) - Outro