Beyond the Puzzle: Escape Rooms as Embodied Reading | Riley-Grace Huggins | TEDxTWU
Escape rooms are a form of embodied reading and literary catharsis. Hailed as a classic team building exercise, the pressure of a time limit and surge of adrenaline create a perfect environment for a group of participants to work together to follow a narrative and solve puzzles leading to their escape. Puzzlers in escape rooms both affect and are affected by the narrative of their room. Though the broad narrative arc stays the same, a team is inducted into the story with immersive props and hands-on puzzle solving. Their stumbling or success in each puzzle or task directly affects their experience of the story they take part in. Additionally, within the confines of an escape room, puzzlers undergo an experience of literary catharsis as they feel a sense of urgency and simulated danger. They have access to fantastical experiences like space exploration and seafaring---and some imagined troubles that come along with those---without the need for a pirate ship or rocket.During the 2020 pandemic, escape rooms became more accessible both to experienced puzzlers and curious beginners in digital form. Often at a reduced cost or no cost, online escape rooms have remained prevalent, providing an additional form of this embodied reading experience in a new modality. Drawing on concepts from game studies like game narrative theory and tabletop RPG design, as well as her own experiences with escape room design, Huggins explores how digital escape rooms provide access to this embodied form of literary catharsis. Riley-Grace Huggins is a graduate student of English Literature at TWU and an escape room enthusiast. Her work has been featured in Ricepaper Magazine and she has a forthcoming piece in The Rumpus. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas where she reads, drinks tea, and dreams of escaping to the mountains. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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