The Objectives:
Under the guidance of Professor Artie Kuhn, our capstone team set out to create an immersive themed entertainment experience designed to appeal to first year Miami students who may be interesting in pursuing ETBD’s academic offerings via showcasing the various disciplines and skillsets housed within ETBD, including game design, 3D modeling, digital marketing, programming, UX design, and my personal expertise of immersive narrative design. The project was to be stage in the space typically used for our VR lab, and would be constructed almost entirely from cardboard. The project was to be created following design philosophies common in the world of themed entertainment, including considerations of the approach, queue, attraction itself, and “exit from the gift shop”.
My Contributions:
As one of the Narrative Designers on the project, I was responsible for the writing scripts for the whole of the attraction, developing backstory for the locations and characters, directing the performance of voice actors for pre-recorded text, assigning the timing, volume, and location of the various soundscapes prepared by our composers, art direction, and coordinating with all teams to ensure consistency in the world and narrative of the experience. I was involved in decision making about which moments of magic amongst the cardboard areas required color, casting, and the layout of speakers within the attraction. In addition to this, I performed in the experience as one of the skeletal pirates interacting with guests. I was also part of the sub-team responsible for developing the Mermaid set piece, and helped to design the musical seashell puzzle. In earlier stages of the process, I prepared multiple story concepts including the original idea for what would become the Kraken fight sequence in the final attraction.
Legends of the Lost Treasure was a unique immersive experience combining elements of various types of themed entertainment such as escape rooms and haunted houses designed and executed as a capstone project through Miami University’s Department of ETBD (Emerging Technology in Business and Design). Guests would meet a pair of pirates, Patchy and Hammer, who would guide them on an epic voyage to recover the lost treasure of Calypso. The guests would arm themselves with magical amulets, and face off against a kraken, the queen of mermaids, and undead pirates before ultimately recovering the treasure. The experience was constructed primarily from simple materials such as cardboard, and ran at the McVey Data Science Building on December 5th and 6th of 2024.
Read the full process document here.
The Processes:
To develop ideas for the attraction, the team broke into several smaller groups devising our own concept pitches. We then consolidated these groups into two larger ones who developed new concepts combining the best elements of these into detailed models, which in turn had their most effective elements consolidate into the final plan. Guests would enter into a seaside town in the queue, where they would meet two pirates from a crew that had failed to find the lost treasure of Calypso. These pirates would give them a set of “magical amulets” (3D printed necklaces containing magnets) that could be used to interact with various aspects of the environment as they moved through the attraction and searched for the treasure. They would enter the attraction onto a ship, where they would have a wheel and controls for a cannon to battle a projection-mapped Kraken displayed in front of them. From here they would arrive on the Isle of Calypso, where they would use the amulets by tapping them on 3D-printed seashells to play music appeasing the Mermaid Queen. After completing the puzzle, they would move into a cave where the amulets could be placed into hidden mechanism illuminating crystals. These crystals “awake” skeletal pirates (puppets operated and voiced by a pair of actors including myself) who challenged them to a game of riddles. Once they bested the skeletons they would move into the treasure room, and use the amulets one last time to activate projections revealing the exit. At the exit they would find a display breaking down the process of the attraction’s creation, and resources to learn more about Miami ETBD.
