The Ladder
“
One of the most buzzed-about escape rooms in the country...A boundary-pushing experience.
~
LA Times
“
The Ladder is overwhelmingly ambitious, seriously replayable, and deeply enjoyable. Hatch Escapes took a lot of risks in style and gameplay, asking players to accept a slew of new and exciting ideas.
~
Room Escape Artist
About the Project
The Ladder, a 90-minute live group experience located in the heart of Los Angeles, is a groundbreaking departure from your typical escape room format. Designed to be fully replayable and offer a deep, engaging experience for puzzlers and non-puzzlers alike, it combines a truly devious puzzle track with a wealth of scored minigames and an RPG-inspired branching storyline leading to almost a dozen possible endings.
My Contributions
- Developed Unity-powered selection menus, video players, and other player-facing interactive media elements.
- Worked alongside the Lead Creative Technologist to develop the game's back-end database, inter-device communication system, and show control system.
- Built three custom retro arcade games to be played inside the experience (including pitching concepts, writing game design documents, programming, buidling levels, designing audio, implementing art, and assisting in the final physical intallation).
- Managed and gave creative direction to several freelance artists working on illustration, pixel art, and game programming.
- Handled all video VFX tasks, such as color grading, keying, compositing, and designing and rendering 3D plates.
- Produced, directed, and edited over 100 voiceover audio cues for a phone switchboard game.
- Designed 2D graphics for various needs, including control panel art, paper documents, and wallpaper.
- Handled intake of music files from the composer, cut them into loopable sections, and worked with the team to ensure high-quality playback in the physical space.
Case Studies
Every damn one of them would murder his own mother to climb a couple rungs up the ladder. But not you though, right? You are as pure as the cold driven snow. Me too, buddy. Me too.
