Taking Stock

Role: concept, game design, graphic design, modular origami

Taking Stock is multi-stage puzzle quest designed for a multi-day campout event, containing locked boxes, collectible objects, and requiring fine-motor skills and persistence of questers and their friends. Participants begin the experience by finding a hanging plaque inviting readers to search the soups of the Scientific Order of Rodent Alchemists for secrets of their magic by identifying their habitat—land, air, or sea—and exploring their inner strengths. The plaques provide clues to nearby locations of locked, colorful boxes. After solving a puzzle, participants decode the combination to open the box, revealing custom printed origami paper inside. 

Following location clues leads to the next plaque, which instructs participants in folding the paper into a "key" to reveal a hidden message, which provides another location clue and entreats questers to find each other to collaborate on solving the puzzle together. At this location, participants are instructed in assembling three of their folded, collected keys together to form a three-dimensional "jewel" that itself reveals a final location clue. At the final stage, the secret is revealed: seek other creatures from other habitats, creatures unlike yourself, to combine forces, create balance, and protect all creatures from the destructive forces that might emerge from the world.

This was my first foray into the world of modular origami and I made many many iterations of the key and the jewel to get the text to line up just right such that the messages could not be decoded without folding. While the origami was definitely a challenge for participants, the hardest part of the puzzle was finding the start points—I hid them too well, so very few participants got started early enough in the event to complete! Nevertheless, several questers found me near the end of the event to request further assistance, and much celebration was had among the ones that completed the exercise,