Overview
Escape From The Unknown was a one-day escape room event run by Kean University's Center for Undergraduate Research + Fellowship (CURF). Students played a browser-based escape room on their laptops inside the VISER Room, Kean's immersive space with projection on three walls, and the five fastest to crack the final code each won $500. I designed every visual in the experience: the game's screens and rooms, the campaign that brought students in, and the projection that filled the room. Ted Saget built the game and designed its website and leaderboard; we worked on it side by side.
The Challenge
Three problems shaped the work. The room: the VISER Room wraps three walls of different widths around the players, so the projection had to work as one continuous image, 23,277 × 1,600 pixels. The loop: the visuals play behind the game for the whole session, so they had to repeat with no visible restart. The campaign: students had to want to come before they ever saw the room, so the poster, social posts, teaser film and website all had to sell the same world.
Visual Direction
Three motifs build the world. The arcane library is candlelight, old wood and shelves fading into shadow, so it feels familiar before anything changes. The portal is magenta and cyan energy, the only cold light in the world. The golden ticket is gold foil, the one warm object that appears in every piece.
Game Design
I designed every screen players moved through: the golden-ticket start screen, the intro for each room, and the clue states that show players they've found something, like the lettered book spines that light up on the library shelf. Each of the four rooms (library, study, lab and vault) stages one step of how a researcher works, and the last one opens onto the portal.
The Golden Ticket
The golden ticket ties everything together. The event ticket carries the CURF seal, the title, and a date, time and place band, and two QR codes let students register straight from it. A Winner edition went to the winners. In the key art the same ticket bursts out of the portal, so the object students saw on the flyer is the one that appears on the walls of the room.
Print Campaign
One campaign image carries both pieces. The foam board poster shows the art at full scale at the event, and the flyer puts the facts up front: date, time, location, the $500 prize, and QR codes to register and open the game site.
Instagram Rollout
On Instagram, the campaign built curiosity before giving away the details. A six-slide swipe carousel splits one continuous library panorama across the slides, so it reads as a single scene as you swipe, and it ends on the first strike of lightning. The day before the event, a portal reel in English and Spanish announced the date, the time and the $500 prize.
Teaser Film
The teaser puts the golden ticket into real footage of Kean's campus. I filmed shots on campus, tracked the camera movement in Blender so a 3D ticket could sit convincingly in each shot, and rendered it in. I then added AI-generated environment shots and edited the film in Premiere Pro with narration, sound design and end cards.
The VISER Room
The projection is the centerpiece: one image wrapped across all three walls. The two-minute loop opens on an ordinary lit library. The lights flicker and go out wall by wall, a spark ignites, the portal tears open in the center and golden tickets pour into the shelves. Then the room settles back and the loop starts again.
Look Development
At wall scale, small flaws show. I checked every stage of the portal frame by frame at full size, and retimed the portal opening so the motion builds through the burst instead of stopping abruptly. On a set of teaser posts, a color pass replaced a dull teal tint and hard-to-read type with warm bronze and clear gold lettering.
Deliverables
Game screens and room art; key art, foam board poster, flyer, and event and winner tickets; an Instagram swipe carousel and a portal reel in English and Spanish; the teaser film (edit, sound and the 3D ticket effects); and the three-wall VISER Room loop. Tools: After Effects, Premiere Pro, Blender, Python, AI image and video generation (Magnific), and Resolume for playback on site.
Collaborator: Ted Saget — game development, plus the game's website and leaderboard.
Outcome
On October 7, 2026, the VISER Room filled with students playing the game on their laptops while the loop ran across all three walls and the game link was projected on screen. Winners took home the Golden Ticket Winner card and $500, and CURF shared the day in its own Instagram recap. One world, built around one golden ticket, carried from the first post to the walls of the room.
