ABOUT

Who's this guy anyway?

Hello, I'm Andreas, and I design escape room style games.

I have a strong passion for creating games that makes sense. In other words, I believe it's important for players to understand why certain puzzles exist within the context of a story. Without this understanding, players may find it challenging to stay fully engaged in the game and lose immersion.

The tradition in commercial physical and tabletop escape rooms is to incorporate brief narratives to connect the game to a broader storyline. However, these narratives often lack depth and often explains the existence of the escape room itself as an obscure security system or the creation of a mad man.

I believe in the potential for escape room style games to evolve into a narrative genre comparable to books and movies. To achieve this, we must take a cue from video games and tightly weave the story progression together with the puzzles, creating a seamless and immersive experience for players.

Since 2019 I have designed three printable tabletop games according to this core tenet.

Andreas Boye
The Gilded Carcanet

CASE STUDY

The Gilded Carcanet

The Gilded Carcanet is a printable tabletop puzzle game for adults, where the player progresses through ten chapters and in each one solve a challenge that the protagonists are facing.

With this game I wanted to hit the ground running, so I went with a fairly straight forward treasure hunting story where the player character, archeology professor Barty, receives a crytic note from his old friend Edward. Barty summons one of his students, Oscar, as his sidekick on the adventure to find the treasure that Barty remember Edward rambling about before they fell apart.

Throughout each chapter, Oscar acts as the non-player character that poses questions for Barty to answer. Each question is posed as something Oscar needs know to progress in the adventure, for example Oscar needs to know which room number Edward lived in in the motel that they are heading to in the beginning chapter of the game. The question can only be answered by solving a puzzle which in the first chapter is decoding the room number that Edward has intentionally encrypted in a way that only Barty can decode it. Once the players have figured out the answer Oscar uses this information to progress the story to the next chapter, i.e. in this case the next chapter is inside the motel room.

The explanation for all the puzzles is that the players are following in Edwards footsteps, but they are not easy to follow. Barty and Oscar get access to Edwards diary early in the game. However, the entries are cryptic because Edward wanted to avoid them falling into the hands of common criminals. And they are partial, because they were not written to be followed by anyone but himself (and perhaps Barty). And finally, they are mixed up. In each chapter the players need to solve a problem combining things in the environment of their location with clues from the diary.

To provide the players with feedback after each puzzle, I decided to implement an offline answer checker which uses a clever concept I first saw in the game Gatekeeper by Printable Escapes. Since all answers are in the form of words, the player can cross out the letters in their solution in a small grid containing all letters in the alphabet. Next to the grid there is a target figure and if the crosses in the grid matches the target figure, the answer is correct. This can be brute forced of course, but it provides a simple way to verify your answer without risk of spoiling it in the process.

User We thoroughly enjoyed this game. I think the age suggestion of 13+ is accurate as the puzzles can get quite complex, but they were actually the perfect level of difficulty for a train journey. Not too easy that we fly through it, but not so hard that we bang our heads against the teeny tiny lap tables.
User The Gilded Carcanet was a ton of fun to play. The story and artwork are great, the puzzles were satisfying to solve and injected us with a real sense of adventure. There are some wonderful a-ha moments to be had too.
SEE THE GAME ON PUBLISHERS SITE
Wizards Workshop

CASE STUDY

Escape From The Wizard's Workshop

Escape From The Wizard's Workshop is a printable tabletop activity game for kids, where an adult acts as a game master who guides the players through six chapters. In each chapter the players engage in a physical activities or puzzle that makes sense in the story.

With this game I wanted to create an experience based on the same principles as The Gilded Carcanet, but tailored specifically for kids. For this reason i ditched the self-guided gameplay of The Gilded Carcanet in favor of introducing an adult game master role-playing a non-player character. This character is the wizard's cat, Marshmellow, who the players meet in the beginning of the story when they stumble into the wizard's workshop hear the door slam behind them. The wizard herself is not present in the game, but Marshmellow will help the player avoid getting caught when he comes back.

I also decided to introduce physical activities or games as part of each chapter, mostly a way to gate access to clues needed in a fairly easy puzzle. As an example of this, at some point the players need to lure clues out of a bird in a cage below the ceiling that they cannot reach, so they do this by taking turns throwing a crumbled paper ball at it. It will reward each hit with a clue and once 7 clues are collected, the players will continue to use them in a simple puzzle. We found it to be more engaging to include this type of activities.

Another advantage of having a game master for kids games is that they can more dynamically provide hints to the players which may not be able to read themselves. However, role-playing a character might sound a little dounting to some parents, so we put a lot of effort into a manuscript which contains lines that can simply be narrated, so no actual creativity is needed to run the game.

SEE THE GAME ON PUBLISHERS SITE
Project Dino

CASE STUDY

Project Dino

Project Dino is a printable tabletop activity game for kids, following the same structure as Escape From The Wizard's Workshop, but this time with a science theme and designed with classroom use in mind.

The idea for this game was to follow the same formula as Escape From The Wizard's Workshop, but this time I wanted to make something slightly educational and more suited for classroom use. My first idea was that the activities and puzzles in the game should be educational. Following this line of thought would lead to a game which would focus on skills tought in school such as math, reading, logic, etc. However, in the end I decided that the resulting game would feel too much like an elaborate worksheet and less like a fun game. My second idea, was that the subject matter and the story should be educational part and landed on a theme inspired by Jurassic Park where the players are helping a scientist hatch a new breed of dinosaur.

SEE THE GAME ON PUBLISHERS SITE
Police Precinct 1949

CASE STUDY

Police Precinct 1949

Police Precinct 1949 is the code name for a printable investigation game currently under development. This game borrows much of the structure from The Gilded Carcanet, but this time the player takes the role as a detective unravelling a curious case in the bustling 1949 Los Angeles.

My vision for this game was to reuse much of the structure from The Gilded Carcanet, but make a deeper story that would lend itself to include more naturally occuring puzzles, such as deduction puzzles. A mystery or crime story is a perfect fit for this, since crime solving itself is a naturally occuring puzzle. There is a single truth about the crime, but it has been naturally obscured because the criminals are withholding the facts, leaving it to detectives to piece together the facts from small clues inevitably left behind.

This game is currently unpublished and I am open to partnerships.

CONTACT ME ABOUT THIS GAME

YOUR CHOICE

This is how I can help you

Game Design

I design story based puzzle games based on your existing audience and product line. I deliver in fully functional and playtested prototype stage, ready to be picked up by your production staff, i.e. artists and graphic designers.

Development

I offer professional playtesting and development for your games in pre-production or production phase.

CONTACT

Ready to roll?

If you want games on your shelf without the time consuming, cumbersome and risky process of game design, you have come to the right place.

Shoot me a mail and tell me a bit about your needs and we'll set up a quick chat.

andreas@andreasboye.com