REPOD Special Release Spoilers Club — Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Commentary from Not Another Escape Room's Time Machine

Have you wanted to go behind the scenes at your favorite escape rooms? With the Spoilers Club, our patron-exclusive series, we take a deep dive with the creators of iconic escape rooms for an indulgent recap plus creator commentary. This content is normally safeguarded by Patreon access to avoid accidental spoilers leaking into the pubic, but we were lucky to cover an amazing escape room that is no longer running, and we’re sharing it with everyone.

Time Machine from Not Another Escape Room is a local fan favorite amongst SoCal escape room enthusiasts, and for good reason. Creators Davey Eaves and Bora Olcken managed a magician’s trick of sending players through the same door over and over again, only to emerge into completely new and different rooms.

In this podcast, Davey and Bora break down how they managed to bend time and space through origami-like manipulation of their sets, what excites them about designing escape rooms, and why they want to create games that are, indeed, not just another escape room. Take a listen to go inside their unique and different approach to escape room mechanics.

If you enjoyed this podcast, you can browse the other escape rooms we’ve covered in our Spoilers Club. To get access to these podcasts, support Room Escape Artist on Patreon.

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We are immensely grateful to our sponsors this season: Morty App, Resova, and RECON: The Reality Escape Convention. We truly appreciate your support of our mission to promote and improve the immersive gaming community.

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Topics Discussed in this Episode

[4:41] Davey and Bora tell us about their journey from escape room enthusiasts to building their first game in Bora’s garage, and eventually moving it to a physical location in Brea, CA.
[6:37] Davey and Bora tell us about their day jobs as math teachers. They talk about the inspiration for Time Machine, wanting to hide secret doors and creating cool reveals.
[9:30] Davey and Bora talk about the mechanic of having players exit through the same door into different rooms, and try to describe how it worked. Check out their YouTube video:

[13:56] Davey and Bora set the scene for Time Machine and walk us through the first room of the game, which takes place in the time machine itself.
[24:01] The players finish the puzzles in the first room and trigger the first time travel portal. Davey tells us about the mechanics of moving the walls around so the players step through the same door into the “future.”
[26:00] We discuss the “future” room and its puzzles. Davey and Bora tell us about designing the video games that are the focal point of this room and programming automated adaptive difficulty.
[32:20] Davey and Bora explain how they transform the first time machine room into a garden scene that leads to the 80’s room and talk a little about why they decided to add this tiny transitional space.
[36:05] Bora walks us through the 80’s room. They tell us about their real-life quest to find authentic objects from the 80’s in thrift stores or eBay that also had commercials from the 80’s available online.
[42:30] Bora walks us through the final transition. David says his brain melted when he somehow walked back out into the very first room, and how spatially disorienting the game is.
[44:50] Davey and Bora talk about why they discontinued this game, largely due to how time-consuming it was to run it, requiring 2 gamemasters working together very closely with precisely timed movements.
[49:30] David likens the games at Not Another Escape Room to stripped-down punk rock with a unique and different approach. Davey and Bora talk about their passion for creating fun puzzles and designing cool reveals.

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Resources Mentioned in this Episode

About Bora Olcken and Davey Eaves

Left: Bora Olcken, Right: Davey Eaves

Bora Olchken and Davey Eaves are the creators and owners at Not Another Escape Room in Brea, California.

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