Hey, Hacker News! I launched an escape room venue in Orlando about four weeks before everything went into COVID-19 lockdown. My team and I started noticing remote/virtual escape room offerings that were just Zoom calls where players direct a game master to look at/interact with things in a physical space.<p>We liked the idea of playing with a real environment from home, but wanted to give players direct control over the environment. Paranormal Panic is our first stab at a remotely playable escape room.<p>Players have 30 minutes to catch a ghost, and must work together as two squads. Each team connects with a separate device (laptop, desktop, or tablet), and although they have live video feeds from the same room, they see different angles inside it. They also have control over different equipment, and have different information on their control panels.<p>It's built using Vue, Websockets, Jitsi, Raspberry Pi HQ cameras, and Python.<p>We got lucky that escape rooms are a reasonably safe entertainment option (gatherings of eight or less, no strangers, sanitized, etc.) during these times, so we're fortunate to have reopened and are seeing good attendance. That said, we hope these remote experiences (esp. as team building events) will be a good supplement to our in-person business. We're developing a few other remote experiences that are more ambitious, and we expect to have them ready soon.
Ha, this is ironic! Didn't escape rooms come about from 90's escape room flash games on miniclip? Now we've gone full circle making a virtual game of a real escape room modeled from a virtual room :D<p>This looks pretty fun, and definitely fit with the times! Splitting into two teams is also interesting.
Great idea. I would have liked to have seen a video about what actually happens - e.g. is it just some Hue lights changing colour and a LCD screen that flashes green etc, or are there actual physical things that happen in response to players? Like does a door spring open if you "hack" something from your laptop? Do you need to pan and tilt the camera around? Do you have to physically move things remotely like turn a safe tumbler to the right combination etc? Can you drive a "drone" around to take a closer look at something on the wall?<p>Seems like a very scalable idea though :) Good luck with it! I can imagine one or two "SREs" running a warehouse with 15 or 20 rooms all going simultaneously and there to fix/reset if 100% automation cannot be done easily (e.g. a remote drone that gets stuck/falls over).<p>I know during lockdown our teams have been <i>screaming out</i> for team building activities that can be done remotely and this sort of thing would be great.<p>Nice one.
Very cool! It’s been so good doing things like this with family during the lockdown.<p>If you’re interested in discovering more remotely playable escape rooms this directory has loads: <a href="https://livevideoescaperooms.com/" rel="nofollow">https://livevideoescaperooms.com/</a>
Great idea! Are the rooms reset after each round to make way for the next group, or is it built in such a way that they can continue from the previous attendees setup?<p>Also I think as a potential player, it would be great to see an example video of it in action within the browser. Unfortunately the idea is something that could often be done poorly with a lack of actions/control, so I would prefer to see exactly what I'm paying for in terms of the setup.
I like the idea so much!! Last weekend was the first time for me in an escape room and I simply loved it, would like to see how entertaining it is online. Only one doubt: isn't 30 min too little time to play it? And isn't 49$ too much for such a short time?
I wonder what is the reason to make the game in the real world if it's played fully online?
Wouldn't it be possible and more cost-effective to create same room and scenarios within let's say Unity and stream videos from there?
Or is it something about the pricing?