Sherlocked’s Post

🔦 Time to shine a little red spotlight on Thomas Lievestro, creator of our very own 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙚, the software that runs 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙡𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙩. Thomas has been an honorary member of Sherlocked since literally Day 1, when he was the very first player to enter our first escape room 9 years ago together with Milan, Mike and Erik. Over the past 2 years he's been working steadfast on the magic brain that runs our latest immersive production, The Alchemist. The 𝘼𝙙𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙪𝙧𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙡 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙚, or ACE, is a beautiful piece of software that strikes the perfect balance between automation and facilitating the human touch of our games masters. For us, that human touch is crucial for immersion, flow and safety; there's a lot in the game that requires a certain sense of timing or engagement from the host. At the same time, automation is crucial too, as otherwise our host would have way too much to do and wouldn't have bandwidth to do the things that actually need them. Why did we decide to build our own system completely from scratch? 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘼𝙡𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙩 has a pretty complex design, and hosting it could potentially have been a nightmare for our game masters. In order to keep some of our more far-fetched ideas, we wanted to be able to completely shape the hosting experience. We're not done with that yet actually; we're constantly collecting feedback from our game masters on how to improve their workflow. I suspect we'll be doing that for a while :) Another thing about Thomas: he doesn't do half work, and he goes out of his way to make his own life harder, to make others' easier. For instance: he decided on his own it would be better for everyone involved if ACE wasn't just a show running system, but an Editor as well, so we ourselves could adjust everything. It was a lot more work for him, but in the long run this would also make his life more fun, as we now don't have to ask him to change every little lighting cue we want to change. There's a lot more to share about the technology that runs The Alchemist, like the amazing team responsible for all the hardware controllers connecting everything, but that's a post for another day :) Update on The Alchemist: we're starting to get some amazing reviews and sales are picking up along with it (it's already a challenge for people to book a slot on a Saturday in 2023!). If you want to experience it, head to https://lnkd.in/eGeABfKK and book a date!