![]() If you do not deliberately structure the experience to have a bottleneck at that moment, you risk leaving some of your players behind. Big reveals, and especially plot twists, are must-see moments. But it’s not okay to miss anything need-to-know. And hey, not everybody gets to see every cool thing in an experience-it’s okay if some players miss anything that is nice-to-know. Maybe they were pages deep into a logic puzzle across the room or even in a totally different room. In an open-world experience, if an amazing moment is not at a proper bottleneck, some guests will miss it. You’ll want to make sure each and every one of those turns is placed properly at a bottleneck. When you begin structuring your experience, you probably have a few surprises, wow moments, and unexpected turns in the story line. Plan your bottlenecks as early as you can in the design process. They are not easy to slip-in after the fact. Unlike beginnings and endings, bottlenecks do not happen naturally. And a bottleneck can be used for so much good… Plan Your Bottlenecks You can’t go on for long, or the player will press X to skip.ĭesigning both for team engagement and time spent will reduce its villainy. Think of scenes at bottlenecks as cutscenes. It’d be even better if it were two minutes. Attention held much better when we cut it down by thirty seconds. A rule I’ve derived from experience: we used to have a bottleneck scene that was three minutes. ![]() If it’s a bottleneck scene, it should be under two minutes. ![]() If you can’t involve everyone in your bottleneck puzzle, then keep the puzzle short and simple, so people don’t begin to notice that they’re standing around while someone else tackles the puzzle. A cutscene should also engage everyone present. If you do, the time to solve your bottleneck puzzle can expand. If you have a bottleneck puzzle (or what designers call a linear moment in gameplay), try to involve as many people as possible. Unlike traffic, which is always evil (please, let’s all learn how to Zipper Merge) It is a neutral tool, and its moral qualities depend entirely on how you employ it. (I’m looking at you, Mayan Sudoku.) It’s a common mistake to encounter in the genre.īut a bottleneck is neither inherently good nor evil. They complain about having only one puzzle to solve, and disliked it either because: they were left out of the solve, or the solve took too long, or both. You’ve probably heard escape room enthusiasts gripe about bottlenecks. What would you like to bring into focus? Wait, Aren’t Bottlenecks bad? Immersive entertainment struggles in not having control of the camera lens like a film director does, but for the length of the bottleneck, you have camera-like focus. The One Thing could be a puzzle, or it could be a scene.Īt bottlenecks, you have the complete attention of all the players. Defining Bottlenecksīottlenecks are moments in an open-style experience where nothing else can be done BUT this One Thing. Bottlenecks, however, offer moments where one and only one thing is happening, and that moment of focus offers the designer the best opportunity to deliver surprise (narrative, scenic, puzzle, or otherwise). ![]() Today I’m exploring the trickiest part of the structure: bottlenecks.Įscape rooms and immersive entertainment are wild, over-stimulating experiences with so much happening all at once.
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