SNL Retreat 2015 Games Explained

I planned a mass escape game for SNL retreat which turned out better received than I expected. After the games, I realised I didn't do a debrief for every puzzle and because groups generally split and delegated work, not everyone knew what every puzzle was or how to solve them. I shall run through each puzzle in this post, and also share a bit about my thought process in designing each puzzle.


Overall Concept
I knew I wanted to make a puzzle-centric game, but I was worried that not everyone might like / appreciate puzzles. I decided to aim for a balance with some tasks ('Objectives') and puzzles, so that there is a greater team-bonding element as well. The trick was then how to weave both together in a coherent and understandable way without being too confusing, and also have some sort of storyline to anchor it. The result is what you guys played :)



#1 - Photograph
This word was given for completing the wefie task from any GM.

#2 - GuyFawkesDay (Difficulty: 1/5)
The phrase 'Remember, remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason and plot' was written, one word on each poker card, on the whole suit of hearts. If you keyed in this phrase into Google, one of the first results is the Wiki pages to 'Guy Fawkes Night', and if you clicked on it, the first line said '... also known as Guy Fawkes Day'.

The testers actually had some problem with this one, with guesses like Vforvendetta or being fixated on Guy Fawkes Night. But I think most groups had no problems with this, and quickly found the answer when they realised they had to fit the number of boxes provided.

#3 - Sound (Difficulty: 1.5/5)
This riddle was found in the starter pack:

My first is like a donkey
My second is a shape
My third is a magnet
My fourth inverts the third
My last is a musical note.
Together, I bounce off walls
Together, I move in waves

It can be solved two ways - the last 2 lines kind of hints at 'sound' being the answer, since it travels in waves and bounces off walls. The more straightforward one would be to solve each line:
First - like a donkey - ass (s)
Second - a shape - a circle (o) [This is a little harder]
Third - is a magnet - U shape (u)
Fourth - inverts the U (n)
Last - Musical note - a crotchet (d)

#4 - Morse (Difficulty: 1/5)
Stuck on a wall was a piece of paper

#4 .-- .... .- - / .-.. .- -. --. ..- .- --. . / .. ... / - .... .. ... ..--..

If you googled for any Morse code translator, you would have got the message 'What language is this?' - Morse. Straightforward and simple.

#5 - Sheep 

This word was given for completing Szehong's objective

#6 - Noon (Difficulty: 1/5)

Some groups didn't find this, but there was a small picture of a clock stuck somewhere, with the hands pointing at 12, and "(PM)" written at the bottom. What do you call this time of day? Noon!

#7 - Brain (Difficulty: 2/5 after clue, 5/5 before clue)

This was the substitution cypher, which all groups started with:

IU BENOP EO WJ EJOAYP PDWP CKAO XQVV

IU OAYKJZ EO PDA LHQNWH KB EO

IU PDEMZ EO PDA BENOP RKSAH

IU BKQNPD EO SDWP UKQ QOA PK OAA

IU HWOP EO EJZAAZ PDA AJZ.

A substitution cypher is simply a message that has each letter replaced with another letter. This replacement can be a fixed pattern of replacement as in this case  (count backwards 5 letters), or a completely random choice (e.g. A = C, B= Z, and so on).

Substitution cyphers can be solved in 2 general ways:

a) Observing patterns in how frequently some letter patterns appear and comparing with the natural language - e.g. 'The' appears very frequently, so a set of 3 letters appearing frequently may be 'The' (e.g. PDA in this case). Or knowing that 'E' is the most frequent letter, make a guess that the most frequent letter in the cypher is 'E' and see if that makes sense.

b) Using a cypher key - which was what you all got in this case with 'BENOP = FIRST'.

With the clue, all groups realised that the trick was simply to count forward to the 5th letter (e.g. B, C, D, E F : B = F!) and then decode the whole message, which gave a riddle (I put the answers in brackets)

My first is an insect that goes buzz (bee = B)

My second is the plural of is (are = R)

My third is the first vowel (A)

My fourth is what you use to see (Eye = I)

My last is indeed the end. (End = N)

#8 - Bottle

This word was given for completing my objective.

#9 - Post (Difficulty : 3/5)

Four pictures telling the story of a man opening an umbrella in the rain were stuck around the room. Not sure how easy this turned out, but it was intended to be moderately tricky.

The trick was to rearrange the pictures in the form of a story (e.g. He was walking with his umbrella; It began to rain; He opened up his umbrella; He continued walking), and notice that there was one letter hidden in each picture. In the right order, it spelt out P O S T. 

#10 - Bars (Difficulty : 2/5)

There were four fruits stuck around the room - an apple, a banana, a rambutan, and a starfruit.

I think one of the fruits dropped/was stuck in a difficult to notice position so some groups were left confused as to why they only had 3 letters. But basically if you followed the order of the fruits and took the first letter of each, it would spell B A R S. I hope you didn't spell anything else.

#11 - Cobra (Difficulty - 1/5)

A picture of a connect-the-dots cobra was given in the starter pack. I thought some groups may mistakenly put Snake instead of Cobra, but looks like everyone got it right.

#12 - Shuffleboard 

This word was given for completing Leroy's objective

#13 - Melody

This word was given for completing Clara's objective

#14 - Fish (Difficulty - 5/5)

This puzzle was my personal favourite. 

All groups received a series of dots like this:

?? What is this?? Fibonacci sequence? Some sadistic cypher with numbers to letters? How am I supposed to get words from this?

I don't think anyone knew for sure what exactly to do with it until they received the next clue around the 45 minute mark. in fact, I heard some groups massively over-thought it and tried to do all sorts of funny things with this scary-looking number array.

CLUE: "Look carefully at the numbers. Notice any recurring numbers? I'll leave it to you to connect the dots. No diagonals!"

If you had paused and taken a deep breath to examine the numbers carefully, you'll notice some numbers repeat - the numbers 7 , 16, 12, 3, 8, 4. With the clue to 'connect the dots', if you had drawn lines to connect the recurring numbers to each other, you would have got this:

I intentionally made it difficult to see at first glance... but if you look long enough, 4 letters should appear. 

Random trivia - the original version of this puzzle was to have a large picture with many tiny details, and a big caption that said 'Look Closely' 

Then instead of within the picture, the phrase 'the answer is fish' would be hidden somewhere in the words 'Look Closely'. After some thought, I decided this was a boring puzzle, and it was too obvious, thus I switched it up entirely.

#15 - Seasons (Difficulty : 1/5)

A simple riddle was stuck on the wall:

"You're hot then you're cold

Four times a year

Not in Singapore"

Think everyone got it fast.

#16 - Doodles (Difficulty: 4/5)

A series of little symbols and a grid of letters was found on poker cards of the Clubs suit. I don't have a picture of this, but the way to solve it was to realise the little symbols corresponded with the grid and basically spelt out a certain word.

There were two mistakes which I have to apologise for : The last two letters were switched up, something we actually discovered in testing but I forgot to rectify ; the first and fourth letter card was pasted upside down, so many groups had 'EOOELES' and were confused.

Some errors observed by the groups:

- Some groups assumed the number on the poker card corresponded with which letter the word was, and thus stopped looking for more cards at the 8 of clubs, and only had 7 letters. But the Ace of clubs had no symbol on it, so the word actually started from the 2 of clubs.

- One group thought 'D' was an 'O', as they were referring to a picture taken on their phones so it was a little smaller.

#17 - Linked 

This word was given for completing Jono's objective.

#18 - Cone (Difficulty 3/5)

All groups started with a strange number string in their pack. 

321478901236987407415963032145654789

This is virtually unsolvable by itself, unless you have a great sense of mind to automatically put them in a grid. I think it also puzzled a few people who tried to look for some sort of pattern in the numbers.

But if you had done your scouting well, you would have notice the clue tagged as #18 on one of the walls, and a number grid was there.

Further thinking would have led you to trace the numbers as they appeared on the grid - thus spelling out the letters (each separated by a zero) C , O , N, E. Tahdah!

#19 - Tangled

This word was given for completing Sherman's objective.

--

All in all, I thought it went pretty well, apart from the buggy puzzle #16. In designing the overall game, I wanted the game to be sufficiently challenging, but all groups should be able to complete it within the time limit. This way everyone feels a sense of 'closure' and achievement. Thus I decided on the gated release of clues to add a progressive element to the game, and indeed, most groups finished at around the same time. I won't reveal which group took how long so people don't feel bad, but the spread was like this:

66 minutes, 71, 74, 77, 79, 80, 81, 83

I have to take my hat off to Group 8, who completed everything with virtually zero additional clues from me. I was surprised when they suddenly came to me at the 65th minute and said they were done. 

Random Trivia: The GameMasters who tested the game, but had the advantage of having all the clues very close to each other, took about 30 minutes to complete the puzzles (without performing objectives).

It was a fun experience planning and running this, hope everyone had a good time cracking their heads over this! :D