JAMES HAMER-MORTON TALKS SHERLOCK HOLMES: ESCAPE ROOM
"It’s designed to take some time"
Daniel John
The Swedish David Wiming translation of your original interactive puzzle adventure 'Sherlock Holmes: Escape Room' just came out on paperback. Inviting readers to take the case this summer. For those experiencing it for the first time, what kind of an experience is this book?
Back when I started writing these books, I wanted to capture the feeling of exploring an escape room in paper format. One of the first live games I designed around ten years ago was based around the idea of making a more diegetic feeling to a game, so rather than simply padlocks locking things up, I wanted everything to be open to you from the start but the room was full of content and it was more of a treasure hunt, so you’d solve a puzzle and it might give you a page number of a book, or the instructions to take every third word of a news article framed on the wall for your next clue. I happened to meet someone working for a publisher who had played one of our games and we discussed the idea that this style would actually work within a book format. Various “escape room” style books had been released beforehand but I felt that they were more “solve a puzzle on this page to get to the next page” and I wanted more of an adventure, narrative experience, so essentially you’ll read a chapter of a book, which involves the main character, Dr. Watson exploring a room or area, and once you reach the end of the chapter, it should feel like you’ve had a first look around an escape room, so that you can go back and use the various parts together to solve your first puzzle. This leads on to your second and eventually, much like a regular escape room, you’ll have used all of the factors in the chapter to solve everything suspicious which takes you to the final information you’re looking for and can continue. It’s a very visual and vibrant book. A very talented graphic designer came in to make the visuals based upon my rudimentary drawings necessary to make the puzzles work. The limitations of an escape room, that is having a limited time within a room, and requiring puzzles that can be solved reasonably quickly so that you don’t spend the whole time working on one cypher, aren’t present in a book format, so it’s designed to take some time. I felt like if you got through the book in an hour you’d find it less value for money, so it’s definitely designed to be approached in many sessions.
Stepping into the shoes of Dr. Watson, what's the story?
Sherlock Holmes has gone missing, and only you can deduce exactly what has happened to him. As Dr. Watson, you’ll travel across England to track him down and find out exactly why there are clues leading you there. It was an instant decision to put you in the shoes of Watson rather than Holmes, before I’d even come up with the story, as I had always felt like things came too easily to Holmes. The challenge of having to complete the puzzles without the master detective himself, while leading you to him, and eventually working alongside him, was always going to be more interesting for a reader, the player, to enjoy. The book is a challenge, and that’s why you should get satisfaction from the puzzles.
The book carries the official seal of the Sherlock Holmes museum at 221B Baker Street. What did that partnership add to this project, did having that official access to those rooms lend anything to the rooms in your book?
Truthfully it came about after the book was complete. Naturally I’d visited the museum, partly as thematic inspiration for the book but also as a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle beforehand. The seal served to confirm to me that it had approval from them, and was a great relief that I had taken a beloved character and created something that was worth existing alongside all of the other offshoots of the original IP. I found it very interesting how we had recently had an influx of Sherlock “inspired” media, the various TV shows including the BBC’s popular modern retelling, video games starring the characters, movies, and even looser inspiration, I can’t be the only one to have noticed that Hugh Laurie’s 'House' shares more than a passing resemblance to the great detective. Plus Holmes… Homes… House? So I lent into the original genre and timezone, but with stylistic choices that would be recognisable to fans of the other offshoots, so I think they led more directly to the final product than a tie in to the museum.
The interactive aspect is remarkably intricate, it’s not just a series of individual puzzles but they all come together into the one larger mystery to be solved. What kind of process do you have for crafting that?
The chapters were all designed as individual escape rooms with more book friendly puzzles. The story came first, with a basic overview that could fit ten separate chapters in ten separate escape room style locations, and once I was happy with the variety there, myself and my partner, Charlie Bond, with whom I run Deadlocked Escape Rooms, looked at all of the locations and started building puzzle ideas out of what could be at the location. Very much how we design our live rooms. Tying puzzles together in print media is always tougher than in a live room. In real life, your puzzle solution can be as simple as revealing a number that you put into a padlock, but it could also become as technical as pushing buttons in the right order, or physically manipulating props in certain ways. You’re much more limited with print, so we approach every puzzle with the concept of inputs and outputs. What is the input of the puzzle, and what is the output. Once you have a list of those, if some of them can’t be linked directly, sometimes all it takes is an extra item that the character could find that links an input to an output. For example, perhaps one puzzle solution gives you a four digit code: 1504, and an input you need for another puzzle is a location on a map, for example the town of Reading. So we would then look at the two factors and perhaps come up with a train timetable that shows you that the train at 15:04 is heading to Reading. Once we have everything and we are confident in the puzzle flow, I’ll go and write the narrative portion that ties it all together where Watson discovers all of the separate parts and hopefully has enough telegraphing to bring your attention to what you need. Another factor that is incredibly necessary in multi-stage print based puzzling is confirmation. This is very easy in a normal escape room setting. If you put a code into a padlock and it opens, that confirms that you solved the previous puzzle correctly. If you perform some actions and a drawer pops open, you have confirmation that you’ve done the right thing. In a book that’s a lot harder to build in, but just as necessary to ensure that you don’t get half way through a chapter and get stuck only to look at the clues and realise you made a mistake right at the start. Our train timetable is an example of how we can cheat that though. By limiting the number of train times, when your previous solution lines up with one of the times on the timetable, you have a lot more confidence that you’re on the right track, if you’ll excuse the pun.
Also an actor, what early clues was there that pointed towards having this deep appreciation for storytelling in various forms?
Both Charlie and myself have been working in immersive theatre for a long time, from murder mystery style events to an immersive dining horror experience set on a train in London, and frankly we had a sense of imposter syndrome when we first started building escape rooms, so we overcompensated by bringing more of a narrative and theatrical style to all of our creations. It came naturally to us because of our backgrounds in acting, and yet separated us from a lot of the other companies doing similar things. I think most people that consume media in any format understand and appreciate the importance of storytelling. A movie can have the best effects in the world but unless it makes you care about the events taking place, it won’t be a good movie.
So do you enjoy uncovering mysteries as much as you enjoy constructing them?
I love mysteries in many types of media from books to movies to escape rooms. I think the best ones give you a fair chance at uncovering them, yet surprise you with the solution. Murder mysteries from recent productions such as the 'Knives Out' series back to Agatha Christie style whodunnits are a real back and forth between the writer and the consumer, there need to be enough clues that when the reveal happens, you can look back and say “that is fair, and that does make sense” and when you get the opportunity to figure it out it must feel like you haven’t been spoon-fed the answer and for me, I love the talent of a good story that manages to walk that fine line of the surprise of a huge twist, yet the fairness of the clues all being there without making it too easy, it’s why I am very interested in a more recent style of murder mystery game called jubensha, of which we’re currently making a live escape room style production of one. I love watching people solve our escape rooms and other mysteries because of that wonderful “aha” moment that we often see if the games are fair, but I am a huge escape room enthusiast as I love solving them myself. I think to date I have played 439 games in various different countries. Generally I think they are such an exciting form of entertainment because being the hero of your own story can make you a lot more invested in taking part or solving the mystery and that’s exactly why I wanted to make the 'Escape Room Puzzles' book series.
Your latest film role in 'Daggers Inn', which screened at Southend Film Festival last summer is, conveniently, also an old school tea mystery?
I’m lucky to have quite regular work in the independent movie scene, and 'Daggers Inn' was a really fun one to be a part of with some great cast and crew. It’s a mystery but almost one that you know the solution for already. More of a “how is it going to play out?” rather than a “who did it?” piece. That said, I am currently writing a murder mystery film script currently working titled 'Murder in the Twin Hotels', which I’m quite excited about and has elements that feel a bit Sherlock Holmes, and even an escape room as part of the story. Our escape room company Deadlocked also has a film production arm, so I’m hoping I can get the script to a good enough place to film it before too long as it’s almost perfectly seated as an amalgamation of all of the things we do, and we’ve always felt like if we enjoy making it, hopefully others will enjoy what we’ve made.
