Jeffrey Grow

Website link - https://epicteamadventures.com/mission-tbd/

A series of digital adventures for 1-4 players on smart mobile devices, utilizing the ClueKeeper app. Programmed using TypeScript, it also makes use of ZapWorks to provide a more immersive experience for players.

Players are members of a crew on the first hotel on Mars, but a series of events has caused issues that need to be resolved for crew safety and eventual opening of the hotel! Players make use of interactions on their phones to solve puzzles, collect information to use going forward, and get the situation back under control.

For this project, I've been in numerous roles. First, I have contributed multiple puzzles to the games, many of which are available for players in the final products. The general process behind the puzzle design had a few steps and involved multiple of the other team members to make sure the game flowed and made sense.

First, we needed to nail down the story of the game. This meant coming up with the situations plaguing the hotel, who the players were, and what steps they would have to do to help solve the issues. After we figured out the general plot, we then nailed down what types of systems would need to be in place at the first hotel on Mars. From there, we then started to design the puzzles.
 
How would players go about fixing Life Support? Is there something blocking players from getting to a room they needed to get to? What type of security system would there be, and how do they go about hacking it? The process we felt was almost like designing a point-and-click adventure game, trying to make sure everything felt like it was a cohesive part of the story and gameplay.

My next role on this project tied in well with designing the puzzles. We had decided the story, where the issues were, and what the puzzles would be. Next was to decide how these puzzles interacted with each other, and how the story would progress based on which puzzles were solved. What did the players accomplish with their tasks? How did they affect the outcome of events? These questions are some of which I work on in the role of a systems designer, specifically on the rewards systems of the series.

By collaborating with the writer of the story, as well as with input from all the team members to make sure the games flow properly, I helped decide what the outcome of these different puzzles is. Sure, the players fixed life support. But did another system also need to come online for everything to start working right? What is the right balance of "Yay, you did it", and "But wait, there's more!"? It is an interesting balance to be certain, because players need to feel accomplishment for their tasks to keep going through the puzzles, but they also need to be faced with other problems in need of solving for the game (and series) to continue.

Finally, I have also provided some level design and artwork to the series. Using Blender, I have grayboxed rooms that players can explore in first person for specific puzzles, adding a bit of that traditional escape room feel back in to the game. Since I've been working on the puzzles and rewards, it helped a lot with the design of the rooms. I know what the puzzles need to work, as well as the outcomes and general story arc. It all helps inform decisions about how rooms need to look, their contents, and how the Hotel itself is laid out. In addition, I also provide grayboxed models to assist our artist and lighten the load so they can focus more on textures.