Puzzle Design
You Wake in a Dungeon
You wake in a dungeon and must escape by any means necessary. A simple puzzle dungeon in the style of classic text adventure games, written entirely in Twine.
Academic project | Solo | Twine
Spring 2025
Design Goals
Use Twine in a novel way to create a themed puzzle room
Evoke the black comedy tone of classic text adventure games
Incorporate character dialogue as a puzzle component
You Wake in a Dungeon was a project that I started out of a desire to return to Twine to make something slightly different than it was intended and go beyond a simple text-only narrative game. I scripted some basic UI out of several pre-made pixel art backgrounds and item sprites, and leaned heavily on Twine’s technical side to set it up like a more traditional game engine.
One of my favorite parts of classic text adventures is the writing style of them, often tounge-in-cheek and irreverent and sometimes even antagonistic towards the player. I tried to write the game in that style, complete with many different ways to die horribly for stupid reasons.
This project was also an exercise in rapid development, as I had very little time overall to write and polish it before it was due as an assignment for a puzzle class. I did all the writing myself, but many of the CSS tricks I used to format things the way I wanted were taken from various forum posts and help articles. I also made the map itself out of a Creative Commons set of map tiles and sprites from kenney.nl, which I chose because they were made specifically to be put together quickly and seamlessly.
Unnamed Back To The Future Event
A multi-part puzzle experience with light escape room elements themed around Back to the Future. Solve the puzzles to reactivate a beacon and bring Doc Brown back home.
Academic project | 4 person team | Paper and props
Spring 2025
Design Goals
Hide clues and puzzle components in an environment
Use simple puzzle formats in new and creative ways
Combine several designers’ puzzles into one coherent event
This puzzle event was somewhere between a meta-puzzle event and an escape room that I made along with three other puzzle designers. We started with the general theme based on the Back to the Future franchise, with the puzzles themselves supposedly existing in-fiction. The puzzles were designed for one to four players, who took on the role of Marty McFly attempting to solve puzzles left behind by Doc Brown.
The puzzles themselves were a mix of paper puzzles and environmental clues. We used a large whiteboard full of relevant information and a lot of science-themed noise, and several of the puzzles required information from the environment nearby. We also used several props, such as a locked box, some custom-made fliers and photos, and even a two-way radio we used to give hints from another room.
My responsibility was to design one of the individual puzzles, a logic grid based on fictional movie sequels that required an additional hidden environmental component. I also performed the role of one of Doc Brown’s assistants as a sort of actor and hint support role. In addition, I was involved in the overall planning of the puzzle’s theme and logistics.
Assorted Paper Puzzles
A Riddle in Three Phases
A series of interconnected riddles that can then be used to fill in the blanks of a single final riddle. I used the psychological concept of priming to suggest the final answer in multiple ways, giving solvers the experience of making connections naturally and feeling smart.
Cards on the Stack
A Magic: the Gathering themed word stack puzzle made for people with deep knowledge of the game and its cards. I tried to build the puzzle with a narrow target audience to deliver a validating experience to those it included.
Tournament in Turmoil
A grid logic puzzle themed around knights at a tournament. I tried to write clues that required multiple passes and some meta-thinking, but were still solveable at a medium level of difficulty. Some clues give different information depending on the context from other answers.