Check Out Tyler Neufeld’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyler Neufeld.

Hi Tyler, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
It all started during spring break of 2024, when I was sick and isolating in my solo Resident Assistant (RA) dorm room at UCLA. I was reminiscing on old memories and going through old phone photos, and I came across some of the props from the first (and at that point, only) escape room I’d designed back in junior year of high school. I had made a Harry Potter themed game for my sister’s birthday, and though I only spent a few days making it, and the only group who played had a hard time deciphering the clues and figuring out what was part of the room or what wasn’t, it was still a lot of fun. That quarter, I was taking a course called Art and Entertainment Design taught by 2 former/current Disney Imagineers, and one of the guest speakers brought in was an escape room designer named Tommy Honton. Tommy’s lecture was lingering in my subconscious mind, and I realized that with my 2 emphases within the theater major, scenic design and playwriting, I was uniquely suited to create an escape room. This time around, it would be much better than the attempt in high school, and as an RA, I could easily use the extra space in my own dorm.

I started that very night, using cardboard I had laying around to block out the space, hanging sheets with command hooks from my ceiling, and tying red yard around pins into my cork board wall. The prototype version of the game “Code Green” took about 3 weeks to build, then I hosted playtest groups for about 8 weeks until the quarter was over and I had to shut it down for the summer. The response was originally encouraging, and though many were suspicious of the idea of an escape room inside a dorm, those who played agreed that the game was fun and had potential.

During that summer break, I lived in the University Cooperative Housing Association (UCHA) at 500 Landfair Avenue. There were many murals in stairwells and common areas, and as a theater scenic painter, I really wanted to paint a mural, but I didn’t know what to paint… Until, as I was completing my 4 hours of chores per week there, washing dishes at 6AM, the idea came to me to create an escape room mural. I designed the whole thing in my head throughout my shift, then immediately transferred the design into Canva. I applied to paint the mural, got approved, and got to work! I finished my first mural game, “Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work” just in time for the RECON Reality Escape Convention in August 2024, hosted by Room Escape Artist. It is an optionally self guided game with no props, no live actors, no time limit, no friend limit. It’s located in the UCHA’s parking garage stairwell. Players can use either their notes app, a pen and paper, or their camera app with edit photo function to keep track of numbers and letters throughout their playthrough, and can check their final answer or receive hints throughout the game via a QR code on the wall.

During Fall 2024, I remounted “Code Green” in my new RA dorm, which was much smaller than the first, and was more difficult to coexist with. This time, I spent 6 weeks building it, improving the quality of the scenic design and props. This time around, I had several amazing Dorm Scapes team members, L Siswanto, Michaela Duarte, and Nick Zhou, to help out. We ran almost 30 groups through the game that quarter, and after receiving an LA Times article in November, the room was shut down by UCLA administration due to the paper ceiling being a fire safety hazard.

Throughout Winter and Spring quarter, we designed a new puppet themed game called “The Great Stanford Squirrel Scandal” and ran it for only 1 weekend late May in with the help and funding of UCLA Res Life and Program Events Management. During the Summer, we amassed a larger group of volunteers and produced a Hollywood Fringe Festival show called “Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch,” which has been my favorite of the games thus far. It was an adaptation of a one-act play I wrote during sophomore year, and had produced 2x previously in a non-escape room context featuring the same lead actress, Kathryn Steenburgh. My co-producer and co-puzzle designer, Ghino Lee, helped to add puzzles, lengthen and adapt the script for this new medium. We had 8-10 audience members per show split in tennis court style seating on opposite sides of “the Pacific.” The play was an exploration of our complicity in climate change and an examination of the differences and overlap between performance art and performative activism.

Summer 2025, myself and another part time Dorm Scapes team member, Hera Song, painted another escape room mural in the same location as the first, this one called “Return of the Radiation.” It’s set in the same universe as “Code Green,” with the same alien types and galactic problem of poisonous green radiation. Both murals are available to play self guided OR with a live Game Master and soundtrack. Code Green is now available to play via Zoom, as the entire game has been digitized on Prezi.

We’re now working on digitizing “Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch” with show video footage, designing a new pirate themed escape room mural called “X Marks the Spot,” and a new escape room play with live actors called “Lunar Junior Archaeology Academy.” Keep an eye on the instagram, @dorm.scapes for updates!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
After having the physical game for Code Green be shut down in November, it was a bit of a struggle to figure out how to digitize it, since I was not in the escape room industry yet during the heavier period of game digitization throughout the pandemic. I tried a few different websites before settling on Prezi and Zoom screen share as the best way to communicate the tone and puzzles in this game.

Fire safety codes were my bane once again during “The Great Stanford Squirrel Scandal,” as a difference in our room’s classification between Res Life’s blueprint files and UCLA Housing’s blueprint files led to us being informed by Program Events Management staff on the day before the game’s launch that we would not be allowed to use the 7 flats that we had already built, painted, cut holes into, and constructed into the corner of a larger conference room. This was really disappointing, especially as one of the puzzle involved instructing the puppets on how to navigate through the (now nonexistent) walls through the “vents.” The illusion of squirrel and duck puppets popping out from behind book cases, little houses, and vents was lost without the walls, but we just informed players that they should imagine the walls. I hope to one day relaunch the game the way it was intended to be played.

Some cases of illness with cast in “Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch” delayed some of the rehearsals, but in the long run this wasn’t too big of a deal.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m a playwright, scenic and props designer, producer, and scenic painter in addition to being an escape room designer. I’m probably most known for escape room design at this point, but I would love to be equally as well known as a freelance muralist. I’m most proud of my escape room murals, because to my knowledge, this medium didn’t exist before “Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work.” I hope to soon paint more duplicates of these escape room murals in more public places, preferably on street level rather than in a stairwell, so that more folks can come across them and play their first (or second, or hundredth) escape room completely free of stress and free of charge.

What sets me apart from other escape room designers is that my designs are all nonconventional and made on a very cheap budget. Having more than 1 live actor in an escape room is quite uncommon because of the extra cost in personnel. The concept of an escape play in general is quite rare, and I was inspired to produce “Escape! The Great Specific Garbage Catch” because I attended another escape room/play combo called “Escape From Godot” Fall 2024, produced by Mister and Mischief. I also include puppets in most of my escape rooms because they’re cute, well liked, and a great way to bring multiple characters to life with limited staff, limited space, and money saved on time and makeup.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I think there will continue to be more high-tech integration in escape rooms, including augmented reality, virtual reality and AI. However, the changes I HOPE to see involve increased player characterization akin to murder mystery games, more live actors, more aim toward full immersion/diegesis, and more complicated stories. I’m starting to see some similarities to 剧本杀 (Jubensha) in Western escape rooms, as these forms are very popular in East Asia and are slowly spreading to the US. I hope the US also takes some inspiration from European horror escape rooms, with their longer game times (typically around 2-4 hours) and very beautiful, detailed sets.

Pricing:

• Code Green (Zoom) – 25 per person
• Return of the Radiation (GM) – 18 per person
• Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work (GM) – 18 per person
• Return of the Radiation (no GM) – free
• Don’t Bring Your Zombies to Work (no GM) – free

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tylerneufeldesign.myportfolio.com/dorm-scapes-1
• Instagram: @dorm.scapes
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-neufeld-3161692a9/
• Other: https://offthecouch.io/book/dormscapes