Introducing...
Escape from the Tabernacle
This is a full-on escape room experience done in Wonderland. If you've never done a real world escape room, the whole concept is that you're trapped inside a themed room and you must use the given clues and resources to find the way out. These puzzles are typically comprised of patterns, textual analysis, decrypting messages, and finding hidden items. They can incorporate math and logic, utilize sound and light in interesting ways as part of the solve. The idea behind an "escape room" is that you have to think critically about the space in which you are trapped, because everything inside the room has a purpose, even if it isn't immediately clear.
I always wanted to try and build an escape room inside Wonderland, and while I've already done levels that are quite close to escape rooms in concept (QFE's #151 "Sun Castle"), this one is the real deal. A complex interplay of riddles, technology, logic, and a detailed storyline set inside of the Morklin Foundation's newest museum exhibition, "Escape from the Tabernacle" will challenge your ability to analyze what's right in front of you.
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This project represents an idea I only ever theorized was possible within the confines of Wonderland game mechanics. And now it's actually in the game. This was a genuine pain to design, easily the hardest project I've taken on so far in Wonderland given its ambition - one I nearly gave up on several times. But not only did I refuse to give up - there was no compromise whatsoever. What you see and what you'll play is exactly the experience I first conceptualized more than three calendar years prior.
FUN FACTS if you're curious how ambitious this project was:
A major thanks to Cadence for their Crumpet RTW editor – without it, I don’t think I would have been able to make this level happen.When it comes to just how much this level pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in Wonderland, consider that both the RTW engine’s object and surface limits were reached during its construction – I actually had to modify several parts due to exceeding these limits at several points. The board layout is 89x99, which makes it QFE's fourth-largest level by physical size, however it takes the cake as my densest level, even considering my many smaller but more packed levels. That’s thanks to both the aesthetic design and the mechanisms behind the scenes which utilize every single item in the game, and even still, more than 85 different hex-edited metatiles were required to construct everything within what was still a very limited space. The only reason this level doesn’t give you a MAV is because most hex tiles don’t add to the surface count – if they did, then I wouldn’t have been able to build this (don’t know what I mean? Check out THIS post which describes how surface counts work in RTW). As a matter of fact, this level was at one point so packed with stuff that I eventually got an exit MAV from the sheer amount of things the game had to process in the level at a single time (of course, this is no longer the case, but it was yet another major technical complication I had to deal with). I have more than 260 draft versions of this level throughout various stages of its development, which makes it the level with the most developmental versions in my arsenal.
Major thanks to Amnon who has been a significant help in testing this room. The current version is considered the release candidate, meaning that so long as no glaring issues still exist (or perhaps if something needs to be adjusted based on player feedback), it will be the final version.
VERY IMPORTANT: Please extract the 'tabernacletoo' folder into your CustomModels directory. This is critical in order to complete the solve.
CUSTOM MUSIC: I prepared a custom soundtrack specifically for this level to complete the escape room experience. You can download it from Mediafire HERE. Turn off the in-game music, keep sound on (important), and loop the soundtrack in the background.
You have one hour to ESCAPE FROM THE TABERNACLE.
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