Attention secret agent, you have been selected for a very important mission right here in South Philadelphia.
The challenge has been brought forth by local game creator Eric Dale, who is also well known as “Eric the Puzzler.”
Dale’s latest puzzle is called “Philly Spycraft Mission” and takes place in South Philly’s Bella Vista neighborhood. The cooperative outdoor puzzle adventure has escape room elements and real-time immersive narrative. It gives small teams the chance to take on a spy mission in the real world.
“There’s parts where you are telling the story and driving the story forward and making decisions in the story,” Dale said. “And there are parts where you are finding things and piecing them together with other things that you have that you found. And there’s also the real-world aspect of it. My goal is to make you feel like you are on a spy mission.”
Teams are given a dossier and will follow a plot that will take them to several interesting public locations in Bella Vista.
“You are on a team of spies and you have an assignment,” Dale said. “It’s not literally an open-world experience but I want it to feel like you don’t know what’s going to happen and you don’t know what you are going to encounter and you don’t know how or if you will achieve your mission.”
Most teams compete the mission in about two hours. Dale used a team of testers to go through the process and received positive feedback from the experience. The game is currently running and teams can book their experience at https://www.ericthepuzzler.com/find-a-puzzle/philly-spycraft-mission.
The Philly Spycraft Mission follows on the heels of a successful run last year of South Philly Mural Escape, where participants locate clues on murals as part of an escape room game.
Dale, who is a self-employed graphic artist, writer and photographer, moved to South Philly in 2015. He began creating puzzles for extra income when the pandemic played a disruption in his normal day-to-day.
“This was very much a pandemic thing,” Dale said. “Being self-employed, I saw something like $16,000 worth of work just evaporate overnight. I had a lot of extra time and used some of that time to pursue this idea that was suggested to me by a street artist named Faith Davis. We started off talking about working together on a street-art scavenger hunt. Then life changes happened and the pandemic happened, but the idea stuck with me and that was the germ that became my my first puzzle.”
Dale said he’s actually not much of a puzzle solver himself. He prefers to be the quiz master instead.
“I trace it back to Legos,” Dale said with a laugh. “I really loved playing with them as a kid. It was a very physical sort of manifestation of what I do now. I would get a Lego set, follow the instructions and then I would immediately disassemble it and add it to my other Legos and build something crazy and new that came from my own head. That process really feels similar to how I design puzzles.”
Dale enjoys creating challenges for others. He rates the Philly Spycraft Mission as a two out of five in terms of difficulty.
“I’ve learned that when you create a puzzle, it’s always harder than you think it is,” Dale warns. “But it’s very fun for me to craft these things. And the response from people who have participated is exciting and rewarding and validating so I want to keep creating fun things for people.”
This particular challenge took about 150 hours from idea to completion, Dale said. Some of his challenge is figuring out which public places to incorporate. Last year’s puzzle centered around art, which is near and dear to Dale. There’s a good chance some artwork could be involved this year, too, even if it’s not directly related.
“I still want to take people places where there are other things that are interesting and valuable that they get to see and experience even if it’s not directly integrated into the puzzle that they are working on,” he said. “You’ll see public art anywhere in Philly so hopefully you’ll notice them as you go around.”
The cost of a group is $175 and the recommended number of players is four to six participants.
You will need to use your phone to send and receive text messages and navigate using a mapping app. You will also have to read small printed text, handle very small objects with manual dexterity, bend and crouch, and travel about one and a half miles on sidewalks. The recommended age group is over 10 years old.
Good luck, secret agent. This message will self-destruct in 4 … 3 … 2 …
