Puzzle Creators React: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The Witching Hour is upon us in this Halloween special, it's time to pull up a rickety, mouldy stool at the near-empty pub, the Brush, Nose and Bone. In this episode, we're joined by a master of horror, Keith Dozois of USB Escape to discuss all things horror in escape rooms. How does horror affect puzzles? What are our best (and worst) experiences with horror? And how do you make horror good in an escape room?
As always, here are your recommendations for this month.
Jamie - Ice Nine Kills (band), a metalcore whose recent output has been centred around iconic horror films, and was a big inspiration for Jamie's episode this arc.
Mairi - Strange Jigsaws (game by fleb), a short digital puzzle game about solving 50 or so rather strange jigsaws. The prequel (20 Small Mazes) is free, if you want to see what sort of thing you're getting yourself into.
Jon - Never Let Me Go (novel by Kazuo Ishiguro), a slow gentle book about a trio of young folks in the British countryside but they attend a very unusual school and are on an unusual life trajectory.
Keith - Scarlet Envelope for their fantastic puzzle games (yay), and Curios' Albrecht Manor Letters, an epistolary horror experience through writing letters. Two fantastic Canada-based game creators.
Hosts: Mairi Nolan, Jon Saunders, Jamie Gibbs
Special Guest: Keith Dozois
Editor: Jamie Gibbs
All links to our social media profiles and our Patreon programme over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom
TLDR: The final episode in the VHS Nightmare arc has the four hosts chatting about all things horror game, and puzzle game design at a spooky pub.
The Infinite Escape Room is a comedy escape room podcast where a group of friends make and solve audio escape rooms for one another. It's one part tabletop RPG, one part escape room with a bit of Monkey Island humour sprinkled over the top.

After missing their one-flight-a-day from the Australian desert, the gang decide to shelter for the night in an abandoned shack deep in the outback. Inside they find a VHS player, and three tapes.
But this is no ordinary VHS player, as the moment the tape goes in the world shimmers in static and we find ourselves transported to... A sewer.
There's distant crying coming from the darkness and a creepy red balloon hovering in the air. But there's no time for clowning around when there's a puzzle to solve.
If you're playing along with the puzzle, check out this visual asset when Jon finds the compass.
Puzzle Maestro: Jamie Gibbs
Solvers: Mairi Nolan, Jon Saunders
Special Guest: Keith Dozois of USB Escape
Episode Art: Dom Jordan
Editor: Jamie Gibbs
All links to our social media profiles and our Patreon programme over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom
TLDR: The first episode in the VHS Nightmare arc follows the team and special guest Keith Dozois in a maze-like sewer system inspired by Stephen King's IT.
The Infinite Escape Room is a comedy escape room podcast where a group of friends make and solve audio escape rooms for one another. It's one part tabletop RPG, one part escape room with a bit of Monkey Island humour sprinkled over the top.

In this new series, we put our professional puzzle design experience to good use and look at escape rooms in film and TV as if they were real escape rooms.
In this podcast we're looking at the escape room episode of Inside No. 9, "CTRL ALT ESCAPE". Follow Mairi, Jamie, and special guest Alex Hylands-White as they put the room through its paces and discuss what improvements they'd make to make it a better escape room.
Alex brings a wealth of escape room experience through his work as a designer at Clockwork Dog and Marketing Director at COGS. COGS is a show control software and hardware platform used to create and manage interactive live experiences like escape rooms, haunted houses, and immersive theater. It allows operators to easily design automated puzzles, control effects such as lights and sounds, and manage hardware like sensors and locks through a user-friendly interface, all without requiring complex programming skills.
Hosts: Mairi Nolan, Jamie Gibbs
Special Guest: Alex Hylands-White, Marketing Director of Clockwork Dog and COGS
Editor: Jamie Gibbs
All links to our social media profiles and our Patreon programme over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom

Does adapting escape rooms to audio make them more accessible … or more exclusive? Join Jamie, Mairi and special guests Dani and Bill from Escape This Podcast as we discuss accessibility in game design and what it means for creating escape rooms of the ears, the eyes, and all the senses.
Why a hotel? Turns out Australia has an interesting drinking culture around hotels, but you'll just have to listen to find out more about that.
As always, we come to you with some recommendations for the month ahead. They are:
Mairi - Signing up to vote in this year's TERPECAs. Or just using the site to find some cool escape rooms near you.
Bill - Novelty Automation in London, UK. A museum collection of satirical, home-made arcade machines.
Dani - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and in particular pay attention to it's clever feeding of information in character dialogue.
Jamie - Another podcast: Today in History! Which does exactly what it says on the tin. Short, snappy episodes about what happened on that day in history.
 
Hosts: Jamie Gibbs, Mairi Nolan
Guests: Bill and Dani of Escape This Podcast
Editor: Jamie Gibbs
All links to our social media profiles and our Patreon programme over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom

In the most long overdue cross-over since Eastenders made a Bastard episode with Neighbours (true story), we finally welcome our natural ancestors from Escape This Podcast and take them... to their own studio. But all is not well, they are locked out, Jon has beaten them to it and is about to takeover the (podcast) world.
Join Mairi, Jamie, special guests Dani and Bill from Escape This Podcast and a very, very special cameo, as they try to take down the plummy giant, Lilliput style.
Puzzle Maestro: Jamie Gibbs
Solvers: Mairi Nolan, Dani Siller, Bill Sunderland
Episode Art: Dom Jordan
Editor (and self impersonator): Jon Saunders
Visual handouts to play along
Mixing desk
Poster
Notepad
All links to our social media profiles and our Patreon programme over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom
Check out Escape This Podcast on their website, or wherever you get your podcasts usually!

In this episode, Jamie joins forces with two very special guests in order to take on a rogue Mike and Jon who are concocting a podcasting takeover of epic proportions. Their target - the enormous Escape This Podcast skyscraper that dominates the Sydney skyline. The date - the Australian national podcasting festival. Expect improv, terrible puns, and a cameo from a man pretending to be the Mayor of Sydney.
In this episode we're joined by special guests Dani and Bill from Escape This Podcast.
Puzzle Maestro: Mairi Nolan
Solvers: Jamie Gibbs, Dani Siller, Bill Sunderland
Episode Art: Dom Jordan
Editor: Mike Collins
All links to our social media profiles over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom
Check out Escape This Podcast on their website, or wherever you get your podcasts usually!

The sun is setting at Stonehenge, and we must bring it back with out wits, a wasp and a jam sandwich!
Part 2 in the Summer Solstice series finds the gaggle of puzzlers at Stonehenge just in time for the sun to rise. The only problem is, if they don't perform the ritual correctly, the sun might not rise at all. In this brain-melting, time travel twisting episode, we'll have to master the past, present, and future if we want to make it out in time.
In this episode, we're joined by Marcus Richardson and Nathan Hicken, the fantastic hosts of the murder mystery podcast Aurelius Whitlock's Murder Museum.
Puzzle Maestro: Mike Collins
Solvers: Jamie Gibbs, Mairi Nolan, Marcus Richardson and Nathan Hicken
Episode Art: Dom Jordan
Editor: Jamie Gibbs
All links to our social media profiles and our Patreon programme over at https://linktr.ee/theinfiniteescaperoom
Check out Aurelius Whitlock's Murder Museum on:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
...and wherever you get your podcasts usually!

It's the first in our 2024 Christmas series, where the gang try and stop internationally typecast mafias from destroying Christmas.
This week, Jamie presents Mike, Jon and Mairi with a nail biting conundrum - are the New Zealand Mafia really bad enough to go on the naughty list, or is all fair in love and garotte wire?
Original art for each episode is by Dom Jordan. Check out more of his stuff at https://domjordanillustration.com/