Room Escape Artist

The Book of Dreams – A Puzzle Anthology is a puzzle book organized by Lee Ballan, with many contributing puzzle creators.

Format

Style of Play:

• Puzzle book
• Light puzzle hunt

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Story seekers
• Best for players with at least some experience

Required Equipment: Computer with internet connection, mobile iOS device for one section, pen and paper

Recommended Team Size: 1-2

Play Time: 6 hours

Price: $25

Booking: This book is no longer available for purchase.

Description

This is a puzzle book that provides samples of the structure and style of 10 different designers. It is the long awaited product of a charity project started in the spring of 2022. Each chapter can be solved independently, though the story progresses through each chapter in order.

Scott Olson’s Reaction

The Book of Dreams accomplishes Lee Ballan’s goal of demonstrating that “puzzles are awesome.” Each chapter showcases the unique skillset of ten different designers, acting much more like a sampler for each as opposed to one connected approach. Because of this, the format, difficulty, visual presentation, and interactions varied greatly. Summer Herrick and Errol Elumir creatively pushed the boundaries for text-based puzzles, the –Locked twins (Dead- and Sher-) added slick online elements, while other chapters encapsulated the style of their creators. A consistent mechanism to check solutions and better print quality would have improved the design. Anyone playing The Book of Dreams will see the awesome diversity of the puzzle community and find what resonates with their visions.

Andrew Reynolds’ Reaction

The Book of Dreams was a pandemic-era project that certainly took its time to get to us, but the delays have given us a quality product. Each chapter in this anthology was developed by a different creator and blended in a narrative about Lucy and her adventure in the dream world. This allowed for a series of disparate stories to be told and puzzles to be presented. The chapters varied in difficulty, and there were times that the progressive hint system became very necessary. Whereas the back half of the book was very text heavy, the first half was highly decorative with a lot of art. While these were very attractive, the full-color art made it difficult to write in the book – and I tend to solve my puzzle books in the books themselves. Overall, The Book of Dreams was worth waiting for. While it’s not currently available outside of the original IndieGogo campaign, it would be nice to see a second print run for anyone who missed it.

Matthew Stein’s Reaction

With a successful Indiegogo campaign back in April 2022, The Book of Dreams was very much a project of the pandemic. I felt a ton of nostalgia as I progressed through the chapters and re-experienced the distinctive voices of some of my favorite puzzle designers, presented side-by-side for the first time ever.

That said, the book’s contributions ranged significantly in style, scope, and quality. I found the chapters by Summer Herrick (Locurio) and Rita Orlov (Postcurious) to be particularly elegant, with clear signposting, tight editing, and satisfying meta-structures. I also appreciated the more experimental approaches taken by Bluefish Games and Errol which each offered a unique take on the “dream” theme, as well as the chapters by Deadlocked and Sherlocked which extended the puzzling beyond the book with some creative digital components. There’s a clear pattern amongst these creators: they all have extensive experience designing puzzle hunts and/or at-home experiences, formats which directly translate into making puzzles for a book.

Looking at The Book of Dreams as a whole, there are a couple key learnings which may help inform other similar projects featuring multiple puzzle designers.

• In order to best showcase individual voices, it’s essential to also set overarching style guidelines and stick to them. This applies to graphic design — having a cohesive visual identity which ties the individual pieces together, even in small ways, and predictable structural elements like chapter numbers. This also applies to answer format — ensuring each element has a similarly structured output, just like the parallelism of a crossword’s themed answers.
• Don’t be afraid to set specific puzzle constraints, especially in service of a satisfying final metapuzzle. After all, constraints give rise to creativity. Assigning an answer for each chapter or even asserting that puzzles must all be fully solvable offline can ensure a smoother solving experience, while still allowing creators to take interesting risks true to their personal design styles.

I so deeply appreciate the intention behind this project — bringing some of the top creators in this community together to help raise money for Doctors Without Borders, meanwhile delivering a beautiful puzzle book to everyone who contributes. Though, as a charity project, I can’t imagine this approach ultimately raised all that much money for the intended cause relative to the effort put in, especially with the ever-rising costs of printing and shipping over the past few years. In future endeavors, a more financially effective model might look something something closer to a 2-4 page spread from each contributor, released as a printable PDF.