Meet Gregory Anderson, developer of CodeCandyBlue Escape Rooms

Well, there are many types of online escape rooms that differ from live rooms any number of ways. Many try to replicate the live experience as much as possible - some have a live guide with a video camera walking through a live room, while some replicate a live room in a 360º point and click web app. CodeCandyBlue adventures are quite different. They are very plot driven, so each puzzle advances the story somehow, rather than just being a random lock stuck in your way. Each scene (or "room") is related somehow by the scenes before and after. Also, documents or items found in one scene may not come into play until several scenes later. Our adventures are not timed - most puzzles have multiple parts and require a deep dive into the documents and items that have been added to the player's dossier (or "inventory"). I'm as much a fan of online escape rooms as I am a creator, and the fun for me is using my brain to search through different pieces of information to find what is relevant to the puzzle at hand. My friends and I used to spend up to 4 hours on a Friday night, with copious amounts of wine, working our way through a mystery in a box, and enjoyed the luxury of being able to think things through and discuss all the different pieces of information. That is the experience we are aiming for with CodeCandyBlue adventures. The booze is optional.

The name CodeCandyBlue is probably not the most marketable company name! The word "Code" is somewhat relevant, what with the games requiring some writing of code, and the puzzles frequently feature coded information. But Candy Blue is just the name of a musical I wrote in the 90's, and it's been kind of a personal brand ever since. As for the subtitle - "Online Mystery Adventures", that's changed several times since we started up in February 2021. It's an ongoing process to find the words that best describe our adventures. I don't want anyone buying one of our adventures with the wrong impression of what types of games they are, and the industry is new enough that naming conventions haven't really been established yet. Are they "Online", "Virtual" or "Digital"? "Escape", "Mystery" or "Puzzle"? What hasn't changed is the word "Adventures", as that does a good job of indicating the story-driven linear nature of the games.

Murder Mystery House was inspired by the great British mysteries of Agatha Christie. I must have read everything she wrote when I was in Jr. High! I was partial to Miss Marple. I have also played some of the Hunt-a-Killer games, and was looking to create a murder mystery with the same kind of game play that has proven so popular in our earlier titles like The Mayan Temple Mission, and The Cryptographer. I love the idea of solving a central mystery, but if you are just looking for the ID of the killer, and maybe the motive, location and cause of death, it doesn't lend itself to solving a bunch of puzzles and maintaining a strong narrative throughout a 2-hour game. It's really tempting to just start guessing, which I hate. So in Murder Mystery House, you need to solve puzzles to uncover evidence, and the story unfolds around you as you progress. One example is a puzzle where you can mix and analyze different potions to try and match the one found at the crime scene. For each scene we have three requirements: 1) It must advance the plot, 2) it must have a cool interaction (like mixing potions, or navigating a maze), and 3) it must require information from multiple sources to be solved. I think we pulled it off very well with Murder Mystery House.

There is a feedback form at the end of every adventure, and I'm so grateful to people who fill it out, because whether their comments are positive or negative, they always help us improve the entertainment value of our games. I think the most common comment we get is that people enjoy the variety of puzzles. Most people play in groups of 2-6 players, and there's always some math puzzles, some language puzzles, spatial reasoning, etc., so everyone in the group gets a chance to shine at some point. The other comment we get the most is that our games are very challenging. Most people like how challenging they are, but there have been a few who expected to finish in under an hour, were very unhappy with how difficult the puzzles were, and resented having to use the hints to speed through it. That's one reason I created Cadets - Training Day. It's a free adventure that can be completed in under an hour, and, while less difficult than our full-length adventures, it gives a good idea of the style of play that can be expected in CodeCandyBlue Online Mystery Adventures. I encourage anyone who might be interested in our adventures to give Cadets - Training Day a try first. If you like it, you are guaranteed to like the rest of our adventures. It can be found in the Free Stuff section of the codecandyblue.com website.