Escape room in a book uses augmented reality to tell stories and present puzzles
Translating with technology.
Experience an escape room within a book that uses augmented reality technology to hide secrets and tell its story.
Called The Book of Lost Things, the escape room game book features the story of a party of courageous heroes who set out on a journey that has been hidden in a “Sherlock-style” mystery within the book. During the party’s adventures, a scribe took on the responsibility of chronicling their story and writing it into The Book of Lost Things, which the players must decipher in order to unearth the tale and finish the escape room book.
Using a companion app, players can attempt to find clues and put the pieces of the story together. When initially reading through The Book of Lost Things, players will be baffled by the strange contents inside as it is comprised from an unreadable language and odd imagery. However, as an app-assisted game experience, players can download a free app and use it to scan the book’s pages to discover annotations for the mysterious contents.
The app won’t just allow players to decipher the book’s narrative, but it will also contain cryptograms for players to ponder, alongside decoders that are hidden within certain images on the pages that will help players to unlock puzzles found throughout the book. Once players have discovered the answers to the book’s various puzzles and riddles, they will learn more about its stories and legends - eventually leading to a complete narrative by the end.
The Book of Lost Things was created by Jay Scott Nolte, an AR developer and games designer who was inspired by the Book of Kells, a illustrated Latin manuscript that features the four gospels of the New Testament Bible, to make their own book that would tell a story through a language and images that players would need to decipher.
The Kickstarter campaign for The Book of Lost Things is live until January 12th, with a pledge of $79 (£60) getting backers a hardback copy of the book that’s estimated to arrive in December 2022.