Making of Aunt Edna’s Heirlooms Game
September 11, 2021
KateBaldwin
Earlier this year I made a table-top escape-room-in-a-box style game for friends and family to play. I’ve gotten some questions about how I put it together.
Don’t read this post if you plan to play the game, because there are spoilers!
After playing some table-top escape room style games, I wanted to make my own. As a graphic designer, I think I have an advantage over most game designers because the images were not a separate process for me. The icons and the puzzles were devised simultaneously. I wanted to minimize red-herrings and test the puzzles well on real subjects. I wanted players to immediately know they got the right answer (no gobbledygook code answers). I wanted everything to have a tactile component. Since I was not planning to mass-manufacture this game, I could have lovely, real physical materials. I thought a crotchety old-lady theme would be funny and easier to achieve with goodwill and eBay. It has since been pointed out to me that old ladies are actually not the most fun of themes, so my second game is Tiki Themed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
// This function replaces short codes with images for the Aunt Edna game and for some reason absolutely needs to be the first thing in this FOOTER script section
function AuntEdnaIconReplace() {
var AuntEdnaIconList = [[]];
AuntEdnaIconList[0] = ["[IconCodePhrase0]", "<img class='AuntEdnaIcon0'
src='LinkToImage.png'>"];
AuntEdnaIconList[1] = ["[IconCodePhrase1]", "<img class='AuntEdnaIcon'
src='LinkToImage1.png'>"];
AuntEdnaIconList[2] = ["[IconCodePhrase2]", "<img class='AuntEdnaIcon'
src='LinkToImage2.png'>"];
var findIconShortCode, repl;
var page = document.body.innerHTML;
for (var i=0; i<AuntEdnaIconList.length; i++) {
findIconShortCode = AuntEdnaIconList[i][0];
repl = AuntEdnaIconList[i][1];
while (page.indexOf(findIconShortCode) >= 0) {
var positionOfShortCode = page.indexOf(findIconShortCode);
var shortCodeLength = findIconShortCode.length;
page = page.substr(0,positionOfShortCode) + repl + page.substr(positionOfShortCode+shortCodeLength);
}
}
document.body.innerHTML = page;
}
//Run only if we are on a page relevant to this so that we don't slow down the whole site
if (window.location.href.indexOf('auntedna') > 0) {
AuntEdnaIconReplace();
}