EDscapade Games opened its doors to the public for a short stint in March, when there was still much work to be done, just to the infrastructure of the company/store itself. When we received the location, the store itself had already seen better days, leaving itself a shell of its former glory. What used to be a massage spa and parlor, was not a barren area waiting for new ideas to decorate its interior. We had a plan that we would work hard for the first 2-3 months, just to clean up, repaint, remodel, rewire, rework, renew, and reimagine the entire place. At first, everyone was so excited to have a place to call our own, we worked tirelessly for hours on hours, even coming in through the early night, just to do what we can. As the first month started to come to an end, people started to lose that fire they had. It was hard to work that many hours in the day, then come into the store and work an equal amount of hours into the morning, then wake up and do it again.
Nine minds agreed to a list of responsibilities and duties, each happy to take their sections and work, but some didn’t realize that before we could even delve into the realities of divided responsibilities, there were things that everyone had to share. And there it was … working together is a hard task when confined to a space, and everyone’s learning ability starting from a different place. Some seemingly came in, without flaw, and just worked and worked and worked. Fueled themselves with McDonald's and continue to work till this day, others worked tirelessly to get the place customer ready for the first month, and then slowly started to feel the fatigue of the lack of free time and sleep, and yet there were even others who came in to do what was assigned to them, and not more because to them, it was good enough. What we learned at some point on the continuum is that we weren’t calibrated on what good work is versus what is just work.
We also had a 30/60/90 plan that included putting the company up in 90 days, with at least 2 Escape experiences built. To this day, we are 289 days in, and we have one room open, a room we are all happy with, but still one singular room open. Our second room, our Easter Island - came from a puzzle-filled classroom escape idea that never came to fruition, because it was missing the oomph needed to make it shine. We had this grand idea of having the same competing rooms next to each other, where two parties would be able to compete with each other. It was a mess of a game, that no one took responsibility for, it was a game we kept bandaging over and over again, hoping that at some point, with enough bandages, it would turn into something cool. We even BETA tested it for a long time, and after the first two revamps and well into a third revamp that was working well, we as a group decided to trash it. To the company, if no one was going to take ownership of it, it would never last. We wanted a room that we could be proud of. We all agreed that Hostage was a game that we could stamp our name too, sure we still had work to do, but it had all the working elements, and gave the public something different, the same feel from the horror movies. Sure COVID didn’t help with making things easier, but we made do with what we could. Past 90 days in, and after several triages to a game doomed to fail, at least in our eyes, one of the owners felt compelled to pour his passion into words and convince the majority of what we wanted.
In his eyes, he wanted to feel a sense of adventure, excitement from doing quests, a room that gave its customers custom roles they would have to play, even a creative survey people would have to take to reveal their inner warrior, or wizard, or ranger, or… well you fill it in. In theory, his heartfelt passion for the game was so true, it moved many of us, “YES” - we all said in our hearts, the idea of a Dungeons and Dragons type game sounded so exciting, an adventure like no other, and a tavern built within a week. What a sell it would be, and then as quickly as the excitement came, it went like the wind. 289 days later, and we’re still trying to wrap up our final installation of the Battle. What we’ve learned from the experience - is that we’re people driven by passion, once it’s gone, harnessing that same love we had for the idea, is a hard thing to do. What we need is fuel, to help ignite the passion for a game seemingly so close to finishing but never yet quite there. Therefore, we’d like to invite everyone to come out and play our newly completed version of “BoX” opening November 18, 2020 - to help validate the game and give it purpose.