Portable AI Escape Room from Krenicki Student Building

So, there was one time, on a trip to Spain, Matthew Marczak ’26 (ENG) found himself chained up in some guy’s basement.

He laughs about it now. But, true story, he was part of a group who willingly walked down a flight of stairs into a stranger’s basement, willingly agreed to be chained there, and was only mildly afraid that they wouldn’t fit. get out in time.

The whole experience was like a scene from the horror movie “Saw,” he said, in which the main character puts his victims through a battery of puzzle-like tests to save their lives.

“I love movies and TV shows, and something like this allows you to be the main character,” Marczak says. “Imagine being Indiana Jones, walking into a temple and having to run around placing totems on platforms. Escape rooms allow you to do this. These are interactive, immersive experiences that allow you to be the character.

In character, Marczak was chained to other pirates on a boat that rocked for an hour and a half while they figured out how to overthrow a mutiny. And he raced against time as a government agent to save the president before a terminal illness took him — or before the hour was up.

Marczak estimates he’s played in more than 75 escape rooms — the furthest from home being the basement in Spain and the largest in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in Las Vegas.

As grand as those experiences were, he’s now focused on building a portable escape room that people can play in with friends at home, but that’s no less immersive and no less interactive.

With funding from UConn’s IDEA grant program through the Office of Undergraduate Research, Marczak’s project has the working title “Developing Next-Generation AI Entertainment for Portable Escape Rooms,” although by the end of the next academic year, he hopes to have produced a complete project. -a blown prototype that people can play.

The concept, he explains, is that a host would reserve the game through an escape game company with a physical address and pick it up to play at home. In a small group or large party, players would follow the game to completion and return it 24 hours later to the company, or to a large city, perhaps in a locked drop box.

“It would come in this cool, super high-tech wooden box with buttons and light sensors and special effects to make you feel like you’re in a traditional escape room, but you’re at home,” explains Marczak. “Inside the box there would be a set of strange metal parts that, when screwed together, form a robot that starts talking to you and you can respond to it.”

The whole game centers around the idea of ​​robots’ artificial intelligence and whether humans can train them before technology takes over the world – but in a fun way to envision the fall of humanity, jokes Marczak.

The game would use a cellular connection, not Wi-Fi or the Internet, allowing it to be even more portable and able to be played just about anywhere, Marczak says, adding that he hopes to incorporate cheats using people’s phones, such as directing a player to focus their camera on an object to display a secret message.

It’s just augmented reality, he notes. The robot texting or calling on the phone is real – because, after all, AIs are out to destroy the world.

Marczak helped develop the games “Breathless” and “Invasion” at Mind Factory Escape Games in Bridgeport, where he was named creative director. So he understands what happens in the evolution of a game.

And that’s why this game doesn’t have a name yet. Part of it depends on how he decides to end the script, he says.

Marczak says that at age 12, he played his first escape room and has been hooked on the concept ever since. During the pandemic boredom of 2020, he found an old table at home and taught himself electrical concepts to incorporate a series of puzzles that a player would have to solve to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile.

He says that’s what piqued his interest in electrical engineering.

Playing the role of William Barfée in his high school’s performance of the “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” helped develop his love of theater.

Put the two together and, at UConn, Marczak is majoring in electrical engineering with a minor in entertainment engineering and aims to work in the entertainment industry, perhaps even designing immersive experiences at Walt Disney World.

“I’ve always been fascinated by how things work, and I had so much fun as a sophomore in high school designing the circuits for this first portable escape room,” he says. “I learned everything by watching YouTube videos or finding free online courses.”

A student at UConn’s Krenicki Arts and Engineering Institute, which joins the College of Engineering and School of Fine Arts to offer courses in entertainment engineering and industrial design, Marczak says escape rooms are a perfect example of merging disciplines.

Operating the escape room robot is the basic circuit design. Designing the game to make players feel transported is theatrical. Programming the two to work together is computer code, much of which is open source, Marczak says.

“I probably ran into 20 different problems building the first one four years ago and I learned a lot about what I could do better next time, what needs to change,” he says.

Edward Weingart, Krenicki’s co-director and associate professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts, is Marczak’s mentor on the project and has been one of his advocates since his first, albeit unsuccessful, application for funding.

Marczak says he initially saw an opportunity for engineering students to get hands-on experience by building an escape room on campus. It would provide experiential learning and the opportunity to complete a senior design project, not to mention serve as a recruiting tool for a program.

When that failed to gain financial support, he regrouped and considered that the only technology portable escape rooms offer today is a USB stick to plug into a computer. And video games are limited to 2D immersion.

“Most people who play escape rooms aren’t there for the puzzles. They are there for an interactive and immersive experience. They are there for the filming. They are there for the special effects. They’re there for experiential things,” he says.

Weingart and the Krenicki Institute pushed Marczak not to give up, he says, and urged him to apply for IDEA funding by turning to home entertainment. And it worked.

“I love being creative, coming up with these crazy ideas and making them happen,” Marczak says. “The possibility of making a living one day is mind-blowing.”

He continues: “Almost every company uses electrical engineers. I am currently interning at Strain Measurement Devices in Wallingford manufacturing sensors for the medical and aerospace industries.

Broadway shows employ electrical engineers to create technology for sets, as do Hollywood and theme parks like Universal Studios. It even suggests job opportunities in the insurance, technology, and business sectors.

“The opportunities are endless,” Marczak says, emphasizing, “None of this feels like work to me, even all of my engineering classes. They are so much fun. I don’t feel like I’m in a classroom, because it’s something I want to learn.