We Are Creative Works Episode 23

This is the twenty-third episode in a series called We Are Creative Works. In these videos, we show off different projects that our talented team is working on. Below is a transcript of the video.

Hi! My name is Russ Van Natta. I’m the Vice President of Business Development here at Creative Works.

And, I’m here to talk to you today about our newest escape room, Cell Block E.

We had a time coming up with the concept and building out this new room. It debuted at Hogue’s Fun Factory in Pennsylvania.

And, it was a really awesome opportunity for us because it allowed us to integrate new technology and improve systems for the inner workings behind the scenes on the escape room itself, as well as having just a larger footprint with more dynamic prop integrations across the board and I think is one of our most challenging rooms that we’ve ever put together.

Once we had the sample puzzles and the inspirationals that we thought this could really be, our design team and our engineering team comes out with:

What’s the full footprint that this has to be?

How many mini sub stations or stages do we progress through?

What’s the storyline and are we protecting the integrity of that?

So that way, things as you move from one area to the next and interact with one prop or another, you don’t ever feel like you’re taken out of the experience and you stay main character of your story.

And so, our design and engineering teams have to stay really focused on that.

And then our production teams have to take those elements and create that realistic nature so you do feel like you’re transported to another area and that you are living the story as the main character.

And so, the details of how we finish the props and fabricate them all are a part of that.

Not only do we have really robust props, but we have even further improved upon our previous rooms the new type of networking that we bring all of those together and the coding that helps it all work.

It’s just that next evolution of what the escape room puzzles should do with each other to create a cooler experience.

Instead of having to have a different computer, or brain, in each one of the props, we can bring those to one centralized server instead of having a static “one, then two, then three, then four” type of an approach, for laymans terms.

Now we can have multiple things running at the same time and not lose any fidelity in how those operate.

Ultimately, we had a phenomenal time putting together the first iteration of the Cell Block E experience.

We are so excited at what it’s going to be able to do for Hogue’s Fun Factory in providing those memories for their guests and this elevated next level experience that just kicks the pants off of the competition, both ours and theirs.

And we’re really excited for the memories that it’s going to make.